Spam Spam Spam Spam
|
What is Spam?
Spam is unsolicited commercial e-mail advertising. Think of it as Internet junk mail. Our statistics 8/29/06! We are battling to filter out spam and to deliver all valid email messages. Our logs showed that 300,000 spam emails were deleted by our filters in the past 24 hrs. There were about 10,000 messages delivered that didn't look like spam to the filter software. We are constantly upgrading our spam filtering system while the spammers continue their attempts to get spam past these filters. There is no perfect spam filter. Filters are computer programs that look for words and phrases in an attempt to block the spam. Spammers have learned to misspell words and use html commands to hide the content of the spam e-mail. Tricky text the filter sees: <p>Fr<1</politics>ee
Ca<1</cattle>ble$ TV</p>What you see on the spam message: Free Cable$ TV As the filters are adjusted to catch the spammers tricks, the spammers will adjust the tricks to defeat the filters. The battle continues. We at 618Connect agree with www.spamhaus.org that the CAN-SPAM Act is nothing more than the legalization of spam. Please read the SpamHaus article about this law. We do not expect spam to decrease with the enactment of this law. Have you signed up to receive spam today? Why do I get Spam? You get spam because you have inadvertently given the spammers your e-mail address. You probably didn't even know you were giving it to them. Spammers get e-mail addresses from many sources: 1) They get your e-mail address from web pages: You may have posted your e-mail address on a personal web page or in a chat room. You may be using your e-mail address as your user id on Ebay. Any of these postings are available to everyone on the Internet, including spammers. You should never post your personal e-mail address anywhere on the web. 2) Spammers have bought your e-mail address: 618Connect does not sell or give your e-mail address to ANYONE. Many web sites ask you for personal information and e-mail addresses. The only reason to ask for your e-mail address is to send you more e-mail. They may only send you messages about the service. However, they may very likely give your e-mail address to partners who intend to send you unwanted advertisments, or sell your e-mail address to someone who will send you more spam. These companies can then do the same--selling your e-mail address until your inbox is little more than a trash bin. When you register at a web site, you are probably also signing up for spam. As a precautionary measure, you should never use your personal e-mail address when signing up for anything online. How do I prevent spam? You can cut down on unwanted mail or possibly completely avoid it by keeping your personal e-mail addresses private. Only send e-mail to people you know and trust. You should set up a free e-mail account to post on web pages and register at web sites. Both Yahoo! and Hotmail provide free e-mail accounts and both are perfect for the job. This free e-mail address can easily be removed if it accumulates too much junk mail. You can then get a new free e-mail address to post. Help, I'm being inundated with spam! Help! If spam is becoming unbearable, you can give us a call at (800) 497-1349 and we can set up a new personal e-mail address for you. While we do have our servers running scans for e-mail coming from known spammers, it's nearly impossible to filter out all spam without also filtering legitimate e-mail messages. If you get a piece of junk e-mail, the most important thing to remember is DO NOT REPLY TO SPAM. Simply delete it. By replying to spam, even by clicking a link to remove you from a list, you're letting the originator know that there is someone on the other end of a valid e-mail address. This is only motivation for him or her to send you more unwanted e-mail. Never follow the spammers' instructions. We hope this information has been useful to you. If you have any questions, feel free to call us. Happy Surfing From your Tech support staff. 618Connect © 2001 copryright - 618 CONNECT - all rights reserved |