This issue was a bit delayed. Why? Well, as it turns out, I'm a very
lucky person. Not only is Bill Gates going to share his fortune with me -
but, I get to eat at the Cracker Barrel and Applebee's free for life -
PLUS, I get free clothes from the Gap! All this for simply forwarding
emails to my family and friends. What a country!
OK, I'm pulling your leg. But, you would be amazed at the number of
people who actually forward junk email (spam) in the hopes that it is
true.
This issue of TIPS is going to take a little different format, and it will
be a little longer than the other ones. Don't worry, we'll be back to our
regular format soon. But, judging from what I see coming to our
webmaster's inbox, we need to talk about spam. Welcome to Spam 101!
In this issue:
Spam - what is it
It's the stuff in the can! OK, not in this instance. "Spam" is a catch
phrase for junk email. There are many different types of spam - to some
of you, this email may be spam. And that's important to note - what's
spam to me might not be spam to you, and vice versa, although there are
some types of spam I think most of us will agree are undesirable.
How they got your email address (or did they?)
Actually, it could have been in many ways, or you may not have done
anything! It used to be that you could avoid junk email simply by not
giving out your email address. Those days are gone. Spammers have become
very creative in getting their messages out to people. Many times now,
collections of spam messages to literally tens of thousands of email
addresses hit our servers. The address lists will often include many that
are just set up progressively, like this: ajohnson, bjohnson, cjohnson,
and so on. Many are even random lists of letters and numbers. Thousands of
these may go to no one, but the spammers don't care -- they cancel the
address they send from as soon as their email goes out, so they don't get
a collection of returned messages. They often get something valuable back
later though, when people click on the "unsubscribe" link in their
message. Many times, by trying to unsubscribe, all you really do is
confirm to the spammer that your address is legitimate.
So one major rule is - if you get an email that isn't from a trusted
source, DON'T click to unsubscribe. To clarify, say you get a newsletter
from the webmaster of your ISP (ahem!), and you decide you don't want it.
Odds are you're safe unsubscribing from that. But, if you get an
unsolicited email that has a "click to unsubscribe" link and you click it,
you may be in store for tons of spam! Think of it in telephone terms.
If someone wanted to make harassing phone calls, they might sit at their
phone and dial random numbers. They wouldn't know if the numbers were
valid numbers until someone picked up and said "Yes, this is the Smith
residence." Same goes for email. They may not really know you're there,
until you answer them by clicking that link.
Oh and one other thing, just because you are getting x-rated spam, don't
send your hubby to the couch or ground your kids. While you CAN get
x-rated spam as a result of surfing those type sites, you can (and
probably will) get them randomly too. Once your email address is known to
be valid, it will likely be passed around and even sold on mailing lists
that can get you anything from legitimate offers from reputable companies
to, well, things much worse.
- Be very careful what you do on the Internet. You might be doing something
totally innocent, like buying birthday gifts, but any time you give out
your personal information, be very aware of how that information will be
handled. Most sites have a privacy policy, read it. It may be telling you
that the site will share your information with similar companies. Bingo,
your email address has just been sold. Often there will be a click box
that says "send me more information on future promotions" or something
similar. Be sure they won't share your address if you click it.
- Posting your email address on public web sites is a sure way to get
spam. Here's a web-centric term for you - "spider." Spiders are computer
programs that are designed to "crawl" the Internet and harvest email
addresses or other information. They tirelessly go through page after
page, following link after link, putting email addresses into databases
that are then used for - guess what? Spam! Protect yourself by not
posting your email address on public message forums or other places where
anyone can visit and record it.
- And now, our favorite person. It's that friend who forwards you every
joke, every "forward this to your friends or you'll have bad luck" email,
everything that hits their inbox it seems. They also forward it to the
other 150 people unfortunate enough to be in their address book, and when
you get the email, you see all of the other 149 addresses too. (I can see
you nodding your head, I think we share the same friend - she sends me all
this stuff too!) Well just imagine how far your email address makes it,
once that email has been forwarded a few times. Pretty soon, it's a free
mailing list if it gets into the wrong hands. That leads me into the next
section - hoaxes.
Email hoaxes
There's a little boy trying to get a world record by having the most
signatures on an email... Old Navy will send you a gift certificate if you
forward this to 10 friends... Women are being attacked in parking lots!
Forward this to everyone you know... You have a virus on your computer, it
has a teddy bear icon! Delete it and forward this... The Nigerian
government will give you half of the million you put in your bank for
them...
Yes, that's right. All false. In general, if you get an email that says
"forward this" or "send money" - DON'T! You're just perpetuating the
problem, and adding to the load of - you guessed it - spam that clutters
up the virtual world. Besides, you're probably annoying your friends and
they're too nice to tell you. ;) At the very least, research it before
you forward it. Some links where you can find information about hoaxes,
viruses, and scams:
http://hoaxbusters.ciac.org/HBHoaxIndex.html
A site sponsored by the government, it has some interesting reading if
you're bored sometime.
http://urbanlegends.about.com/cs/virushoaxes
Information about virus hoaxes, in terms even Aunt Ethel can understand.
http://www.snopes.com
A traditional favorite site of many people, it's easy to read and
addresses many types of urban legends, including internet hoaxes.
http://www.scambusters.org
In depth information about Internet scams, and what to do if you have been
scammed.
Something we feel it's important to note while we're on this topic... Many
spam hoaxes would have you believe you'll get paid for sending them along,
or that the punchline of a joke will show up on your computer or in your
email after you pass it along to 10 friends. Here's something worth
knowing: Email isn't tracked that way. The only people who know if you
pass something along are the ones who receive it. Not Microsoft, not
Cracker Barrel, not Old Navy... None of them. And if sending an email to
10 people were to cause the punchline of a joke to show up when you hit
Alt-Control-8 that would mean some unwanted program would have to run on
your computer. Your email client sure can't make that happen. Email
simply doesn't work that way.
Getting rid of it
First off, this won't be easy, and it won't totally go away. But, taking
the right steps can at least reduce your spam load.
First, you have to keep in mind that what is spam to you, isn't spam to
everyone. Maybe getting a newsletter from the local grocery store on the
corner bothers you, but your neighbor loves it - so the
Vincennes Online
spam filter isn't likely to block that one. Forward any spam you would
like reviewed for inclusion to the spam filter database to
junk@vincennes.net but know that not everything
sent there will be filtered right away, or ever. We chose Brightmail as
our filtering company because the people there review each email that is
sent to them only add it to the filter if they judge it to be spam.
It's also very important to know that we don't filter by key words or
addresses. Just imagine if we filtered the word "sex." Then an important
email that said "Guess what Mom - we learned the sex of the baby today"
would be zapped by the filter. We can't necessarily filter by the
sender's address, since those are almost always false - and right now, a
clever virus inserts random names into both the "to" and "from" fields.
If we did it that way, we might filter emails from you! Instead,
Brightmail works hard to find something unique and differentiating about a
spam, then they nail it. Sometimes it takes a bit of time, but it works.
My spam filter catches about 1500 emails a week. I still get spam, but
I'm really thrilled to not deal with 1500 more of them.
To activate the spam filter on your account, visit:
http://www.vincennes.net/members-bin/spam-digest.cgi.
If you already have the filter and you want to see what spam has been
caught, visit:
http://www.vincennes.net/members-bin/spam-view.cgi.
Be sure to sign in to the site first!
The FTC also offers some insight on how to fight spam at
http://www.ftc.gov/bcp/conline/pubs/online/inbox.htm.
Fighting spam isn't easy, and it's not a problem that's going away anytime
soon. Just know that we wish it would even more than you do. Spam puts an
enormous burden on our servers and only adds to our costs, so we do
whatever we can to fight it. We hope these tips help you reduce the
problems spam brings.
A tip about your Vincennes Online service
We are very pleased to announce that we have added another way for you to
get Internet help - live technical support chat! This feature has been
added at no additional cost to you, and is very easy to use. Here's all
you do - go to:
http://www.vincennes.net/help/chat.shtml
and click the button that says "Click here for live help." Before long,
one of our technical support team will be there for you, one on one.
Live chat hours:
| Monday - Friday |
7:00am - midnight |
| Saturday |
8:00am - midnight |
| Sunday |
10:00am - 8:00pm |
Of course, if you can't get online at all, you'll have to stick to
telephone support. They're available during the times listed above, at
1.800.599.1000 - option 2.
This issue's fun site!
Last Words -
http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Acropolis/6537/
I found this site to be a fun read, and full of interesting facts. It's a
collection of famous last words, farewells, obituaries, last stands, and
epitaphs. It may not sound like a "fun site" from the description, but it
kept me engrossed for quite a while.
If you made it this far, thanks for listening, and I hope there was some
useful information here for you. As always, I love to hear from you, so
email me at TIPS@vincennes.net.
