It wasn’t that long ago that if I mentioned spam, everyone would immediately think of that tasty treat in a can! Now to anyone who has used email, the word can leave a bad taste in your mouth for a different reason. Spam is a general term for unsolicited email, just like the paper form that fills your mailbox at home. Unfortunately we can’t just put up a “No Junk Mail” sign on our email box – pity isn’t it? I used to believe that spam would destroy the Internet as we know it. I have now realised that people adapt, and so do software companies, eager to find another program to sell as the “must have software.”

If only it was like the junk mail we receive at home I wouldn’t be so annoyed. However much of this spam is advertising pornography or drugs that enhance your love life. Apart from insulting my sensitive nature and high morals, this also means we can not afford to let our children have unsupervised access to the Internet. The question is what can you do about it? Fortunately there are a number of ways to stop or at least limit spam, though some are better to implement before you fall victim. Here are a few things you can do:

• Make your email address unusual. Many spammers will send emails to random addresses, so peter@somewhere.com is more likely to get spammed than petejs260@somewhere.com.
  
  
• Use an alias or second email address for general emails and newsletters. Some Internet Providers will give you more than one email address. Keep your main address private and use another one when you subscribe to website newsletters, competitions and registrations.
  
  
• Use a free webmail account such as Hotmail or Yahoo as your secondary address. If you receive too much spam, create a new one.
  
  
• Never allow your main private email address to be displayed anywhere on the Internet.  Spammers have software programs that harvest these addresses, even from “some” open mailing lists or websites.
  
  
• Do NOT reply to spam emails, even if they offer a link to remove you from their list. This can be a trick to make sure your address is active.

This doesn’t help you much if your main email address is already attracting large amounts of spam. This is especially true for businesses that need to advertise their email addresses, so can’t be helped by many of the strategies above. Here are some of the ways to reduce the amount you have to deal with:

• ISP filtering. Some Internet Service Providers and Hosting Companies supply spam filtering at their end, removing it before you ever get to see it. This is by far the best solution in my opinion. Not all providers supply this service, and some charge a monthly or yearly fee. Many allow you to adjust levels of filtering.
  
  
• Software filtering. You can download free or shareware software from the Internet that can check your email account and tag suspect emails. You can quickly browse the subjects and see if they are junk, then delete them before your email program downloads them all to you computer. I am personally not a fan of this as it doesn’t save as much time as I’d like. It also adds another process to retrieving email.
  
  
• Email filtering. Some email programs now include a Junk mail filter. They identify suspect emails and put them in a sub folder called Junk (or similar). This is handy, but has limitations. Probably worth having this turned on if nothing else.

The difficulty with filtering is that it can be a time consuming job to adjust and configure for the best results. There is also a risk you may inadvertently remove legitimate emails in the process. Spammers are continually adapting to filtering techniques which makes it difficult to keep them at bay. A more recent trend has seen spammers using malicious websites and emails to infect unsuspecting peoples computers. They then use these computers to send out spam, making it almost impossible to stop them at the source.

The safest thing you can do is protect your email address like it was your credit card. Once your address gets put on a spam mail list, you’re on it for life. Some years ago I stopped an email address I was using because of spam. Out of interest I activated it again and that address was still receiving a huge amount of mail! Years of inactivity made almost no impact.

You should protect other peoples email addresses as well. We often like to pass on jokes and various fun emails, but we forget that the growing list of previous senders and recipients is still shown. These people can be inadvertently added to spam lists or sent viruses because of our neglect to remove their addresses before sending them on. Unless it is important for the next recipient to see who has been involved in a discussion thread, then help protect them by removing the previous senders addresses.

Other types of spam include hoax virus warnings and chain emails. Some of the hoaxes are malicious as they suggest there is a new virus circulating which can not be detected and you should look for certain files on your computer and delete them immediately. Usually these files are ones your system needs and can cause your computer to stop working. Others warn not to install certain software as it contains a virus. These are all hoaxes and designed to generate mistrust and havoc. Fortunately there are a number of websites that describe all these hoaxes. For more information try visiting hoaxbusters.ciac.org and www.symantec.com/avcenter/hoax.html.

Strictly speaking chain emails aren’t spam, but are just as annoying and usually sent to you by your friends! Many are harmless jokes or stories which suggest you should send it on to 10 or more people for good luck. If you want to keep your friends, don’t – not unless it is worth sending. If so, do them a favour and remove the forwarding suggestions. Others are more deceptive and may suggest that some company like Microsoft will donate a few cents to charity or some poor sick boy in Idaho for every email forwarded on. The best thing you can do is to trash these immediately. You could suggest to your friends that you don’t wish to receive this type of email, but this can often offend so only do so if you feel it’s warranted.

Many people now accept that the price we pay to be “online” is having to deal with spam. They are probably right as we will never eradicate it completely. Even though the Australian Federal Government took the initiative and introduced the Spam Act 2003, the source of most of the spam is from overseas which is not bound by our regulations. Even if other governments did legislate against it, spammers usually conceal their identity and shift Internet providers, so are hard to trace. However bad or annoying, it would probably not exist if everyone trashed junk emails and didn’t read or click on the links. This is how they make their money, by a small percentage of people either unwittingly, or out of interest, visiting the sites advertising these products, services and scams.

Email really is a fantastic tool for business and pleasure and many people feel like they can’t live without it. So by following some simple rules you don’t have to be swamped in a sea of spam. Protect your email address and practise safe Internet.