Spam Mail ? The term Spam Mail refers to unsolicited, unwanted, inappropriate bulk E-mail. However, exactly where to draw the line between Spam mail and legitimate mail is sometimes unclear. According to Mail Abuse Prevention System (MAPS): An electronic message is "spam" IF: (1) the recipient's personal identity and context are irrelevant because the message is equally applicable to many other potential recipients; AND (2) the recipient has not verifiably granted deliberate, explicit, and still-revocable permission for it to be sent; AND (3) the transmission and reception of the message appears to the recipient to give a disproportionate benefit to the sender. (Mail-abuse.org)
Brad Templeton did a search a found it started from an old TV skit by Monty Python's Flying Circus. In the sketch, a restaurant serves all its food with lots of spam and the waitress repeats the word several times in describing how much spam is in the items. When she does this, a group of Vikings (don't ask) in the corner start a song: "Spam, spam, spam, spam, spam, spam, spam, spam, lovely spam! Wonderful spam!" .Until told to shut up. (Templeton, 1997)
Normally you cannot, spam control is very sophisticated. A more experienced user can decipher the header of an email and find the origin of the message. But, frequently the Spammer will have set up a one time account just to initiate his email shots. Other times the Spammer will forge headers making it impossible to trace the origin of the spam.
How do Spammers get your Address?Some companies you may have had dealings with sell their mailing lists to third parties, including Spammers. Spammers also have programs which scour the internet looking for any email addresses they can find. If you post to news groups you are also at risk of a Spammer receiving your email address. A safe way to protect your Email address is to have two Emails. One for family, friends, work; and a second for any other time you have to give out your Email address.
In most cases you didn?t subscribe to it so it is unlikely unsubscribing will get rid of your Spam. In fact unsubscribing can validate your Email address to a Professional Spammer. When Spammers buy lists containing millions of email addresses, many emails are no longer valid. By unsubscribing you are telling them your Email is valid and you will probably receive more Spam.
It is only illegal if it promotes illegal products or services. However, legislation is pending in the U.S. that would make the act of sending unsolicited commercial Email Illegal in the absence of an existing business relationship. But, The Coalition Against Unsolicited Commercial Email (CAUCE) is claimed the new proposed bill is weak. CAUCE argues that given the large number of Spam Emailers and the fact that the Federal trade Commission is the only enforcing body; it?s unlikely that any serious enforcements would take place. In CAUCE?s proposed bill your ISP would post an electronic no spamming sign, when this was disregarded it would be up to the ISP to track down the spammer and take action instead of the end user. (CAUCE.org)
Spam is a very big problem, not just to the end user but, to the ISP?s who receive thousands of emails every day. These ISP?s in turn have to buy more Email servers and more bandwidth, which costs them more and then eventually will cost you more. According to Gartner group ?If you think spam costs nothing, think again! In 1997, America Online estimated that between 5% and 30% of its email server resources were exclusively dedicated to handling spam. Between $2-3 of your monthly internet charges go to handling spam, according to the 1998 Washington State Commercial Electronic Messages Select Task Force report. 7% of Internet users who switch ISPs do so because of spam. This equates to a loss of more then $250,000 per month for an ISP with one million subscribers?. (Gartner Group, 1999) Big businesses spend thousands a dollars a year on Spam filters and employee hours due to Spam Mail. According to a Report By Sebastian Rupley ?A recent paper titled "E-Mail in 2003: The Risk Level Rises" from market researchers at Gartner, for example, concludes that "by 2004, unless an enterprise takes defensive action, more than 50 percent of its message traffic will be spam." In a study that focused on all e-mail?personal and corporate?anti-spam software provider Brightmail reported that in a period of one year, spam has grown from 8 percent to 36 percent of all e-mail, and could surpass 50 percent by the end of this year.?
The first thing you should do is set a second Email; so you have one for friends, family and work; and the second Email for whenever else you have to give out your Email. You can also, set up Email filters to get rid of unwanted Spam mail. Even after all this don?t be surprised when you still receive a few Spam mails. No software will get rid of all of your unwanted Email. If you want to take it further you can try to decipher the Email headings and track down the recipient. If you want more information on this go to Abuse.com. This doesn?t always work and seems to me to be a lot of trouble and time to waste. For most email users, using an email Spam filter to get rid of Spam is the only viable alternative to manually sifting through large numbers of junk email every day. There are different kinds of filters: User defined filters are included in most email clients today. With these filters you can forward email to different mailboxes depending on headers or contents. For example, you would put email from each of your friends into a mailbox named after them. You can also use these same filters to forward email to the trash if the origin or contents are suspicious. To do this you need to carefully look at any Spam emails you receive. Try to notice common characteristics, recurring patterns in senders? email addresses, and dubious claims in the subject line and so on. You will soon find that Spam filtering using a small number of rules can eliminate a large number of Spam emails. Header filters are more sophisticated. They look at the email headers to see if they are forged. Email headers contain information in addition to the recipient, sender and subject fields displayed on your screen. They also contain information regarding the servers that were used in delivering your email (the relay chain). Many spammers do not want to be traced. They put false information in the email headers to prevent people from contacting them directly. Some anti spam programs can detect forged headers which are a sure indication that the email is Spam. Not all Spam has forged headers though, so this filter by itself is not sufficient.
As you can see Spam mail is a big problem and is increasing with every day. And there seems to be very little the end user can do about it. We can only hope that Congress accepts CAUCE?s new bill and enforce it to the letter. The one element of Spam that seems to amaze me is who is opening this Spam, who is buying these products? The only articles I found on the subject were a news team who picked five Spam Mails and Answered them, all five turned out to be scams. In order for Spam to maintain its lively hood people must be buying these products. I guess one scam isn?t enough for one somebody they need more.
Templeton, Brad (1997) Original term ?Spam? to mean net Abuse ? Retrieved June, 5, 2003 from http://www.templetons.com/brad/spamterm
Mitchell, A.P. (200) Definition of Spam Retrieved July 8, 2003 from http://www.mail-abuse.org/standard.html
Carlett, Jason (2003) Latest news about problem pending and legislation Retrieved July, 13 2003 from http://www.cauce.org/
Rupley, Sebastion (2002) The Spam Problem? How bad is it? Retrieved July 20, 2003 from http://www.pcmag.com/article2
Gartner Group (1999) ISP?s and Spam Retrieved July, 27, 2003 from http://www.brightmail.com/pdfs/gartner_rebuilt.pdf