SPAM

This subject is one I hate, big time, maybe you will pick this up in my comments. And it’s nothing to do with cheap reconstituted meat! It’s unwanted Email.

There are many types of SPAM. Tinned, deep fried in batter. No! Wrong SPAM!

SPAM is miss use of Email. You should consider your Email address as something personal and private. Why? Well how much junk do you get on your front door mat each day? One of the things that stops you getting even more, is the postage charge. But on the internet mail is almost FREE. Just imagine what a marvellous opportunity that gives an advertiser. And do you care if a few thousand of your million messages are completely in the wrong parts of the world? Not really, they might have a relation in America that needs our product! (I only mention America because a great deal of the junk I get is offering me insurances, mortgages or medical insurance or medication that I can’t buy).

So junk email is an advertiser’s paradise. Almost no cost and you can get your message to millions in a few minutes. So now I have sold you the idea, think about the poor soul on the other end of the wire. That’s actually you, receiving so much junk that you wish you could change your email address.

Non Advertising SPAM and chain mail. (Or - How to add to the amount of SPAM we all get).

Friends (mine and my wife’s) – a wonderful creation. But why do they think I want chain mail from them?

If you receive any mail asking you to ‘mail this to ten of your friends’, then at that point please forget I am a friend, or better still press the delete key!

There is so much of this crap around (strong language warning – oops too late!) and I hate it.

The sorts of things you find are…

“I received this lovely poem and if I pass it on to ten of my friends, we will all be lucky today”

“Little Judith is only three and she lost her Firefighter Dad on September 11^th – send this message to ten of your friends to show your support.”

“Microsoft will pay you $250 if you forward this message to ten of your friends”

“Mail this message to ten of your friends as well as back to us, and we will send you a crate of champagne.”

It is all total rubbish. None of it is true. They just try everything to get you to pass the message on. The only outcome possible from these is overloading the internet with trash, and spreading your Email address as far and wide as possible in an attempt to get on a mass mailing list. I know it sounds hard, but “Little Judith” does not exist! The puppy is not going to ‘get it’ and you are not going to get ‘bad luck’ if you press DELETE.

I don’t want to be ‘one of your chosen ten’, you don’t want hundreds of SPAM mail messages back every day, so please press DELETE.

If you want hundreds of offers for porn or Viagra delivered to your email account each day, cut out the middle man, send me a polite email and I will get you registered for this sort of thing! Funny that – I don’t know where to register you, and you haven’t asked me to do it! So don’t send out SPAM. If you don’t know by now, press DELETE.

SPAM that want’s your identity.

I touched on this on the subject of Virus avoidance, and am going to repeat it here.

One of the best is ‘your internet account is going to be cut off unless you follow the instructions in this attachment’. Many people are fooled by that one. You shouldn’t even go near the attachment!

Other good scams are;

“This is technical support from XYZ. You need to reactivate your account by clicking here.”

“This is technical support from XYZ. Your computer has a problem, fix it by clicking here.”

“This is technical support from XYZ. You are exposed to a virus, fix it by clicking here.”

“This is your Bank, you need to re-confirm your credit card details to keep your account open. Enter them on the form obtained by clicking here.”

“This is Ebay, due to loss of data we need you to confirm your account details on the next page.”

Be warned, these scams will look very authentic. They steal graphics from the people they are impersonating, and take absolutely no notice of the ‘From’ address. This is totally unreliable, almost as easy to change as the subject line on the email. If you want an email from liz.windsor@thepalace.windsor.uk, I can send you one. The bottom line here is don’t click on something in an email, and then go typing personal info. If your bank, or Ebay, loose your data, they are going to be closing real soon. (I know what Ebay use internally, they won’t be loosing your data.)

I have had one of these mails from support@barclays.com asking me to enter my details again for some reason. Guess what – I don’t even have an account with Barclays.

If you do get an Email that needs you to go to somewhere like Ebay, Paypal, your bank or Microsoft for an update, then make sure it’s you that types the address for Ebay, Paypal, Nat West or Microsoft into your browser. Never click a link in an Email to go to one of these types of services.

SPAM from outright crooks.

“I am Frederick Obunguggo, nephew of the recently murdered President Philip Obunguggo of Outer Mongolia (sorry Outer Mongolia) we have lots of cash and if you help us launder this into the UK, you can have 20%. All we need is your bank details to put the money into your account!” Empty your account they mean.

“We have this great scheme where you pay us lots of money and we give you work to do at home, and maybe someday we will pay you.” Not likely, they will take your money and laugh.

“We have this scheme where you can get the latest mobile phone worth £300 for £20. All you have to do is pay your £20 and when enough people have put in £20, you get your phone.” Need I even comment on this – a pyramid scheme where most will loose their money. There probably are no phones anyway! And they even have the cheek to SELL the information of ‘How to get a phone for £20” on Ebay!

Well thanks for the bleak picture.

No problem. Would you like to know what to do about it?

The first thing is as I said, “You should consider your Email address as something personal and private”.

If you publish your Email address on the Web, or give it to someone untrustworthy, then you will end up on a list of ‘potential customers’, then you are doomed!

If you are in this position, or need to publish an email address on the web, take a look at my utilities page, and get MailWasher. This will help you manage your SPAM.

If you are a clever person, and have registered your own Domain, you can make up your own Email addresses, so you can have a spare Email address to give out to people you don’t trust, then if you get too much SPAM at that address, you can just drop the address.

E.g. If you have the domain tesco.net, and your name was vince (like me) your normal email address might be vince@tesco.net, but if you have to give out an email address to someone dodgy, you could use give out vince22@tesco.net. If you started getting too much junk at this address, you could dump it, and start using vince23@tesco.net as a throwaway address. So if I have told you my email address is vince22@m<censored>s.net then you will be calling me names right now.