Top 7 Ways to STOP Junk Email

Nothing makes me angrier than opening my email in-box to find over 150 messages, wading through them all, and discovering that 135 of the messages rate as nothing more than junk.

The problem with junk email or "spam" (the popular slang for unsolicited commercial email) only seems to get worse with each passing day.

Luckily, we can fight back in ways that will actually cut down significantly on the amount of spam we receive on a daily basis.

Try these tips and see if they can't cut the spam you receive down by at least half.

** Don't Respond

Much of the spam you receive contains an "unsubscribe" link saying something like "To unsubscribe, click here." Do NOT click that link.

Clicking it lets spammers know they've got a live email address!

** Use Mailwahser

Get a program like "Mailwasher" from Mailwasher.net that allows you to view the email you receive before you download it.

The program makes it simple to delete dozens of emails, including viruses, before they reach your computer.

** Use Your Filters

Your email program most likely contains filters you can use to weed out emails containing the usual spam words like "opportunity, $$$, sex, viagra" and a host of others.

You can set the filters to delete messages containing these words before ever downloading them to your computer.

** Use An "Assassin"

Spam "killer" services offer users high-powered filtering, often requiring a sender to prove their identity before an email gets sent to the recipient.

One such service, SpamArrest.com, forces email senders to go to a website and type in a random word before their email gets delivered. This service has gained a lot of popularity lately and seems reasonably effective.

** Use a Temporary Email

Maintain a public and private email address and never give your private email to anyone other than family and friends.

Go sign up for a free email account with Hotmail.com or mail.yahoo.com to use whenever you subscribe to a newsletter or request a free report. That way, if the spam ever gets too bad, you can simply abandon the free account and open another.

Your private email address should remain safe because nobody will know it except the people you trust.

** Never Post Your Email

Never post your private email address in forums, guest books, news groups or on a website. Spammers use little robots that comb the Internet looking for email addresses they can collect and sell to others.

Always use a free account or set it up so you can shut off the exposed email address once the spam gets too bad.

** Abandon Ship

Shut down your current account and just start over! This may seem a drastic move, but it may represent the best course of action if your sanity or your email box can't handle another offer for sexual enhancements, a great business opportunity, or a free cruise.

Notify everyone you want to know your new email address and get on with life.

(c) Jim Edwards - All Rights reserved
http://www.thenetreporter.com
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About the author:
Jim Edwards is a syndicated newspaper columnist and the co-author of an amazing new ebook that will teach you how to use free articles to quickly drive thousands of targeted visitors to your website or affiliate links...
Simple "Traffic Machine" brings Thousands of NEW visitors to your website for weeks, even months... without spending a dime on advertising! ==> http://www.turnwordsintotraffic.com
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How My Silly Mistake Reveals Part Of Google's Spam Filter For Auto-Generated Sites - And How You Can

If you use content generation software like Traffic Equalizer, Traffic Ranking or Traffic Hurricane I've got some essential and urgent news for you.

You see, with the latest Google shake-up it highly likely that either many of your auto-generated pages "vanished" from Google's index, or else you haven't been able to get your new sites listed at all (except perhaps for your homepage).

My silly mistake will show you exactly *why* this seems to be, and what you can do to get all your pages listed successfully.

-------- The Site --------

In January 2005 I launched a brand new site based on the winning formula of plenty of original content plus a solid linking structure - a formula I've been tweaking for years that has got some excellent results - and exactly the sort of site that Google loves.

I built numerous incoming links from quality sites and waited for the spiders - with both MSN and Google showing up within 48 hours of launch and Yahoo arriving a few days later.

----------- The Problem -----------

Whilst Yahoo and MSN soon started sending my site solid traffic, Google simply didn't want to know. Ah, "the sandbox" I thought and simply continued to build quality incoming links.

All this time Google had been spidering regularly, when finally in August they clocked up an impressive 199,026 hits to my site.

Finally I'm going in!

Or so I thought.

When it got to October and there was still no sign of my new site in the listings I set out on a detective hunt to try and figure out why...

------------ The Solution ------------

With a 10 month-old site that was being regularly spidered and possessed a Page Rank of 5 it was suggested to me by a professional search engine optimization expert that it looked like I was tripping a "spam filter" that was preventing my pages getting listed but he couldn't figure out why.

So if it *was* a spam filter, what was triggering it?

An exhaustive search of both the visible pages plus the HTML code itself revealed one major error - which may or may not be the cause of the problem...

Whilst each of my META descriptions was different, there were similarities between them.

They were all based on a standard sentence with the keywords inserted.

As an example a similar sentence could read "Contains free articles and resources on the topic of [keyword] together with a free newsletter".

Then I would just modify it slightly for each page, but using this general format.

Could this be triggering the filter?

Only one way to find out.

So I sat down and rewrote every META description on my site making them as variable - in both content and length - as possible whilst still ensuring my keywords were present in each.

Then I sat back and waited...

---------- The Result ----------

Google visited again within a few days a within a week of the changes being made - my site started to show up all over Google with them sending 91 visitors in the first few days of diplaying my results.

Please be aware that this was the *only* change I made to the site - and it resulted in rapid inclusion in the index.

--------- The Moral ---------

No matter how good your site is, and no matter how much original content your site contains, use the same - even moderately similar - META descriptions and whilst MSN and Yahoo won't complain (yet) Google will refuse to play with you.

This would make sense as content generation software typically use these "template" descriptions to create the pages and so this is an easy thing for Google to catch, even if it excludes a few original, content-rich sites in the process.

The solution therefore to getting your pages listed is to rewrite your descriptions as I did to create as much variety in their content as possible.

-------------- Final Thoughts --------------

Lastly it's worth noting that Neil Shearing's Auto Income Secrets (http://www.scamfreezone.com/autoincomesecrets/) suggests a way to use content generation sites with varied META descriptions; information that should become even more valuable now that Google is actively avoiding sites that break this golden rule.

--[[[Note to editors - you are welcome to either omit this last "Final Thoughts" section or modify it to include your own affiliate link to the book in question if you desire]]]—

Copyright 2005 Richard Adams

About the Author:
Richard Adams is the founder of Merchant Account Forum, one of the net's most popular merchant account advice sites. Click Here Now => http://www.merchantaccountforum.com.
This article was posted on December 16, 2005
Article Source: articlecity

Antispam Organization Out There That's Fighting For You

There's an antispam organization out there that's fighting for you and could use your help.

CAUCE, the Coalition Against Unsolicited Commercial E-mail, is an all-volunteer global entity that began as SPAM-LAW, a group brought together for discussion only. They put all their efforts into getting legislation passed that would help stop and penalize spam.

CAUCE has no treasury and no offices. Completely virtual, the organization exists on the Internet, in newsgroups, and online discussion lists. Donations are not accepted because the CAUCE founders and members believe that would necessitate having to respond to numerous lobbying regulations.

CAUCE is now soliciting members, however. While the grassroots of the organization began in the United States - in San Francisco - there are chapters in other parts of the world as well, such as CAUCE Canada, CAUCE India, CAUBE.Au, which covers New Zealand, Australia and all Pacific Rim countries; and Europe's EuroCAUCE. CAUCE can boast more than 20,000 members in the U.S. alone, with all states represented. Even American Samoa and Guam have antispam proponents who have jumped on the CAUCE bandwagon.

CAUCE makes use of their membership list and each member's individual information in one way only. They give that list to the relevant legislators to further the cause of antispam legislation. The purpose of this is to let these legislators know how many voters in their area are concerned about spam and the need for antispam legislation.

To join CAUCE you simple provide them with your full name and e-mail address, your mailing address, your congressional district, and choose a password.

If you don't know which congressional district you are in you can determine that by visiting http://www.house.gov/writerrep. Here you will be asked for your state and zip code. Not only will this tell you your district but it will also give you your legislator's name as well as a feedback form to write to her or him should you so desire.

CAUCE has been gaining national and international recognition as they battle for legislation to stop, curtail and punish spammers. As long ago as 1998, CAUCE went to congress to spur on antispam legislation, which did make it to the floor but was never passed. The latest attempt, again quashed, was a bill requiring spam tagging.

This bill would have forced convicted spammers to note on their messages some clue in the subject line that would tell folks that the message they received is from a convicted spammer. The law didn't pass, nor was it supported by CAUCE. CAUSE and legislators both agree that the law would have been spineless, lacking enforceability. They agreed that those who were already breaking the law by spamming were not likely to comply with some new law that said they had to notify people they were spammers.

The CAUCE web site, http://www.cauce.org, lists its hall of shame. Here you will find sites that have been known to send or support, or at least fail to block spammers. At this writing there are only six sites listed.

About the Author:
Robert Michael is a writer for www.libantispam.com which is an excellent place to find antispam links, resources and articles. For more information go to: www.libantispam.com
Article Source: http://www.articles2k.com