What Should We Do About Spam?

How do senders of spam get their dirty hands on your email address, and will spam ever be stopped?

I receive over 50 emails per day. Usually, close to 45 of them are spam. For the uninitiated, unsolicited marketing emails are considered spam. The amount of junk email being sent has spiraled out of control. Some people receive over 100 unsolicited messages per day! For the purposes of this article, we are going to examine the different methods employed by marketers to steal your email address, and whether or not anything can be done to put an end to spam once and for all.

Most of the marketing messages I receive in my inbox are sexually explicit, but I still like to look at them because some of this junk is actually quite entertaining. My personal favorites are offers to purchase discounted Canadian Viagra, ads for pornographic websites, bogus work-from-home programs, or quotes for 50 year mortgages.

How do these idiots get your email address in the first place? One way they can get it is through opt-in email. When you order something online, as part of the subscription or service that you signed up for, you may have inadvertently or unknowingly agreed to receive offers via email from that company in the future. As a result, said company begins to send you offers via email. This is perfectly legal as long as the company provides you with a way to unsubscribe from their mailing list. If they do not provide you with a means to unsubscribe, then the emails they are sending you are considered spam.

To make matters worse, spammers will often sell your email address and any other information you submitted to them to hundreds of other companies who are looking for leads or mailing lists. Before you know it, your email address has been circulated far and wide to almost every online business imaginable. Once this happens, there is almost no way to protect your email address ever again.

Another common way senders of spam get their hands on your email address is by first purchasing a list of email addresses from someone else, and then sending a joke or an interesting cartoon to everyone on the list and ask that you forward it along to all your friends and relatives. Once you forward the message, the spammer actually has a program that can copy the list of addresses that the message has been forwarded to and send it back to him or her. So now, that person not only has your email address, but also has the email address of every one you forwarded the message to. Using this tactic, email marketers can grow their list of email addresses exponentially.

Another popular technique is known as harvesting. This is accomplished by writing a simple programming function that searches through every web site listed on a search engine for a certain keyword, and then quickly scanning each of those sites for any email addresses that are posted there, and subsequently sending them back to the spammer. An example of harvesting would be a program written to scan every website listed on Google for a certain keyword, such as real estate agents, and then recording every email address that is found on the web sites that come up in the search, and emailing the entire list of email addresses back to the harvester. Using this technology, it is possible to acquire thousands of email addresses in an hour or less.

Harvesting has become a legal dilemma, because the email marketing community feels that it should be allowed to harvest email addresses that are posted on public websites because, in their opinion, if someone has posted their email address for all to see, then other people have the right to contact that person and ask them questions or send them offers. However, web sites where email addresses are posted have threatened legal action against anyone that copies addresses and uses them to build mailing lists or send spam. Unfortunately, these web sites really have no way to prevent this email theft, and it will only get worse in the future.

Spam is here to stay, because it is nearly impossible to prevent. Both big businesses and small businesses have a strong incentive to send bulk email, because it costs nothing, and is a valuable tool for increasing their customer base. Sending regular mail or hiring telemarketers costs a lot of money and is ineffective. As a result, most companies would prefer to send massive amounts of email versus paying a telemarketer or spending money on postage to send offers through the mail. So, we should all expect to continue to receive enormous amounts of spam in our inbox for years to come.

About the Author:
Jim Pretin is the owner of http://www.forms4free.com, a service that helps programmers make email forms.
Submitted on 2006-11-09
Article Source: http://www.articlesarea.com/

The Bad Guys Are Phishing For Your Personal Information

Do you know what "phishing" is?

No, it doesn't mean you grab a pole and head to the late to catch some phish.

The official Webopedia definition of "phishing" is as follows:

The act of sending an e-mail to a user falsely claiming to be an established legitimate enterprise in an attempt to scam the user into surrendering private information that will be used for identity theft. The e-mail directs the user to visit a Web site where they are asked to update personal information, such as passwords and credit card, social security, and bank account numbers, that the legitimate organization already has. The Web site, however, is bogus and set up only to steal the user’s information.

Phishers prey on ignorance, fear, and emotion. They also play the numbers game. The more bait they email out, the more phish they'll catch.. By spamming large groups of people, the "phisher" counts on his email being read and believed by a percentage of people who will volunteer their personal and credit card information.

The latest attempt by identity theives to steal the personal information of eBay members hit my inbox earlier this week and I have to say, this one is pretty convincing. Even this old dog did a double-take before realizing that the identity thieves were phishing for my personal information again.

The sender of this email is listed as: eBay Member - rivernick and the email subject line reads: Question from eBay Member.

The email begins: "Question from eBay Member -- Respond Now. eBay sent this message on behalf of an eBay member via My Messages. Responses sent using email will not reach the eBay member. Use the Respond Now button below to respond to this message."

Listen to me: DON'T TOUCH THAT BUTTON

Of course the email was NOT sent by an eBay member or sent via eBay's messaging system, as it appears.

The email then takes on a threatening tone.

It reads: "Question from rivernick: I'm still waiting payment for my item for about 7 days. What happened? Please mail me ASAP or I will report you to ebay."

The recipient is then prompted to respond to this rather disturbing email by clicking a "Respond Now." button.

Doing so will take you to a website designed to look like eBay where you will be prompted to login using your eBay user name and password.

Once you pass this point you will be asked to update your account information before proceeding. Unknowing souls will offer not only their eBay password, but personal and credit card information, as well, without even knowing that they are about to have their personal information stolen.

The one thing that makes this scam so effective is the threat by the supposed eBay member to "report you to eBay."

The email preys on the fear of most eBay members that they are in danger of receiving negative feedback. Many eBayers would rather you cut off a pinky than leave them negative feedback. It is this emotion that the new phishers are hoping to hook.

The phisher is betting that most people will either be horrified by the threat of being wrongly reported to eBay or they will be ticked off that some jerk is threatening them by mistake.

Either way the phisher is counting on a percentage of people to have a knee-jerk reaction and login to the fake eBay website he has set up clear matters up.

I've yet to see what percentage of people who receive these phishing emails fall for the scam, but if a phisher gets 1_f recipients to turn over their personal information, he will probably consider his phishing expedition a success.

I've warned you about these phishing scams before, but let's review it one more time.

NEVER reply directly to an email that appears to have come from eBay, Paypal, Amazon, or anyoen else asking you to click a link in the email to update your account information. If there is any doubt in your mind whether or not the email is really from eBay, for example, open a browser and type in the URL http://www.ebay.com. NEVER click a link within the email to respond.

NEVER believe that an email supposedly from another eBay member is for real. Again, do not click an email link to reply. Open a browser and go to eBay directly and log in. If the email was from a real member, there will be a record of the inquiry in your My eBay account.

You must be aware that there are bad guys out there who do nothing but spend time trying to come up with new and innovative ways to steal your information.

Be paranoid. Be aware. But don't be fooled.

The phishers will cast their line, but you do not have to take the bait.

Here's to your success!

About the author:
Tim Knox serves as the president and CEO of three successful technology companies and is the founder of DropshipWholesale.net, an online organization dedicated to the success of online and eBay entrepreneurs. http://www.prosperityandprofits.com - http://www.dropshipwholesale.net - http://www.30dayblueprint.com
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MicroWorld releases new version of MailScan Ver. 4.5 - the antivirus and content security software for mail servers.

Michigan - May 20, 2005 - MicroWorld Technologies, Inc. the leading solutions provider in the area of Anti-virus and Content security, has announced the launch of its new version of MailScan Ver. 4.5, the antivirus and content security software for mail servers.

The new version of MailScan provides additional security features to allow users to monitor the TCP connections on their systems, and use enhanced Anti-SPAM control to fight SPAM.

The new security feature interface displays all the active TCP connections to your computer. It lists information about the processes, protocols, local addresses, remote addresses and Process Status on the computer. It allows you to identify any unauthorized access to your mail server and take effective counter measures to safeguard your system.

MailScan 4.5 provides the user with real time access to Relay Blackhole List at <Error! Hyperlink reference not valid. for IPs of known Spammers. The site maintains active real-time Blackhole list that you can use to verify if any IP that connects to your MailServer is listed as that of a known Spammer, and take appropriate action.

MailScan 4.5 is the next step in the continuing process to provide added security to mail servers against virus attacks, SPAM and other forms of security threats to networks via e-mail.

Mr Govind Rammurthy, CEO, MicroWorld Technologies, Inc. says "MicroWorld's MailScan 4.5 with its new features, is a step forward in strengthening our products to ensure that corporate gateways are well-protected from ever increasing and smart Internet intruders. Continuous development has made MailScan one of the most popular mail gateway security products available in the markets today."

About the Author:
Microworld Technologies Inc
Posted: 20-09-2005
Article Source: ArticlesBase.com