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Do you need fake Viagra? Fancy having your privates enlarged? Perhaps you’d be more interested in donating an unscrupulous amount of money to an unknown Nigerian national? What? No? Not Interested!? Unfortunately that won’t stop faceless people from all over the world asking you, often repeatedly.

SPAM (junk e-mail) probably wouldn’t be half as bad if it were properly targeted, yet sadly a 12 year old girl is just as likely to receive such messages as a 40 year old man. Unfortunately an even greater problem is the quantity of messages, with some people receiving upwards of 1000 junk e-mails per day!

For many, dealing with the constant influx of junk e-mail has become a nightmare. Until laws are strengthened and legal action taken then little is likely to change. So what can ‘you’ do? ISPreview has pooled information from around the Internet and come up with a few helpful tips. While nothing can completely prevent SPAM, some of these should at least help to cut it down.

1. Don’t display your e-mail address in public (online)

SPAMMERS use automated systems (”robots”) to search websites, newsgroups and various other sources around the Internet. This allows them to extract any addresses that may have been posted in a publicly accessible location. Regardless of whether or not the address works, if it’s there, they’ll find it.

2. Setup several addresses

Most ISPs will allow you to setup several unique POP (e-mail) addresses, which means you can have one address for strictly personal communication, one for business and the last for general use; such as the e-mail used when buying online goods (order registration system).

This balances the workload and gives you greater control over your contacts, thus allowing you to better monitor the addresses receiving the most junk.

3. Make your addresses unique

SPAMMERS can often find addresses simply by auto-generating a list of commonly used names for any one particular domain name. Consequently using a combination of uncommon names/words, characters and numbers in your e-mail name can lessen the chance that you’ll receive a lot of junk.

For example: d.john.9x@domain.com is less likely to recieve SPAM than john@domain.com .

4. Always read the ‘Privacy Policy’

Most legal websites or publications asking for personal details should have a privacy policy (usually linked at the bottom of any given page). This policy document will tell you exactly how any data you submit may be used and why. Some organisations will intentionally use your details for SPAM and only tell you in this section.

In addition, keep an eye out for boxes that can be ticked and ask whether or not the company can pass your personal details onto third parties. For obvious reasons you should always tick the box that requests them NOT to do this.

5. Never respond to SPAM

Replying to a SPAM e-mail, even with a ‘remove’ request, is more likely to tell the SPAMMER that your address is valid and consequently you could receive more junk instead of less. Through personal testing we also found that most e-mail unsubscribe links do not appear to work, even where a message returns claiming they have. Best avoided.

6. Avoid ‘opening’ (reading) SPAM e-mails

Many SPAM messages use glossy HTML and images, with some data being loaded from remote websites and servers. These e-mails often contain imbedded code that tells the SPAMMER when the message has been opened, thus allowing them to validate your address and continue sending more junk.

Most e-mail clients will have an option that allows you to click through the subject title of messages without the body itself being read/loaded. This can often be difficult to find due to differing methods, thus it may simply be easier to go offline while reading your mail.

7. Disable HTML e-mail reception and or Image loading

Disabling HTML and or ‘Image’ (picture) loading could cause problems with the format of some messages; however it can also stop automated systems, such as the method noted above, from working and thus help to cut down on junk.

Unfortunately not all e-mail software will support such options, yet others may do so automatically. For example, Mozilla’s Thunderbird client will not load e-mail images unless you specifically choose to allow it. Most modern clients also use a degree of intelligence to block unsigned (imbedded) code from running and thus communicating with remote servers.

MS Outlook Express v6+ includes an option to disable HTML, although it’s not very obvious. Goto the ‘Tools‘ menu and select ‘Options‘ from the list, then select the ‘Read‘ tab. Under ‘Reading Messages‘ there should be an option for ‘Read all messages in plain text‘, tick it.

8. Does your ISP have a policy or filtering for SPAM?

Check the terms and conditions (T&C’s) of your provider to see if they have any kind of policy on SPAM. Some may filter junk e-mails or offer optional services to do so, while others could take action against the victims (that’s you) simply because they receive too much junk (affects ISP bandwidth).

In this case prevention is better than cure since many filtering technologies can also erase legitimate messages. Regardless, ISP’s that at least offer you the ‘option’ of filtering are better than those that provide nothing.

9. Avoid free e-mail providers

Free e-mail providers, such as Microsoft’s Hotmail, may be cheap and easy, but they’re also vulnerable to SPAM. These are well recognised services and thus frequently targeted by SPAMMERS, so much so that any filtering services (those offered by the system) can often be overcome by the sheer volume of junk.

10. Webmasters should ‘hide’ e-mails

Webmasters (website managers) often need to display e-mail contacts, yet (as per the above warnings) this can make those addresses vulnerable. The best thing to do is hide the address using ‘character entity evasion‘ or a similar method of public encryption in your MAILTO command. A free online ‘generator’ for such addresses can be found here:

http://www.mways.co.uk/prog/hidemail.php

11. Webmasters should create a junk e-mails file

This is a large publicly accessible .txt or .html file on your site with as many ‘incorrect’ addresses listed inside as possible. This doesn’t so much cut down on SPAM as cause an additional headache for the automated systems that hunt for publicly accessible addresses.

12. Use client-side anti-SPAM software

If and ONLY if the SPAM you receive is at an unmanageable level, then consider a client-side solution. Most integrate directly with popular e-mail software, such as Eudora and MS Outlook; filtering junk in a method that you choose and control.

Unfortunately, much like server-side solutions, these systems are far from perfect and will often remove legitimate messages. However, you can usually specify that messages identified as SPAM be moved to a different folder, thus cutting down on your e-mail management time and allowing you to vet what is and isn’t junk.

A number of client-side solutions can be found listed here:
http://www.majorgeeks.com/download.php?id=10

It’s worth pointing out that some clients, such as Mozilla’s excellent Thunderbird package, include rudimentary anti-SPAM filtering as standard. This is well worth considering instead of the rubbish Microsoft usually manages to bundle with its operating software (Outlook Express etc.).

13. Changing e-mail & proper use of the “Address Book” feature

Shockingly most people never even touch the “Address Book” feature of their e-mail software, which would be a mistake. It’s usually wise to keep at least one list of important contacts (family, friends, work etc.) in your address book.

This allows you to quickly and easily send a message to multiple people at once, speeding up the process of communicating any address changes you may need to make. This is far easier than waiting until a later date and having to trawl through years of past messages to pick out those of relevance.

Sooner or later you may need to take the big step and setup a new address rather than remain with a SPAM deluged one. This is difficult enough, but the above tip could save hours of hassle.

14. Keep your PC secure and up to date

SPAM isn’t just distributed by unscrupulous individuals, it can also be sent on mass following infection by malicious software (Trojans, viruses etc.). Typically all computers on the Internet are vulnerable and thus any infection of your system is likely to harm others as the malicious code often utilizes the user’s computer to spread to others through e-mail.

Hence it is essential that everybody use anti-virus software and stay up to date with the latest security patches. Automated update methods are built into most modern software, but you must make sure they are enabled.

15. Custom legitimate messages filter (submitted by John).

Spam filters frequently misidentify legitimate messages as spam, placing them in the bulk folder where they are either overlooked or found only after a time-consuming trawl.

This technique, which I call Recipient Header Verification, reduces the incidence of these false positives, and can be used by anyone using an anti-spam system permitting user-defined filters.

It works by checking that the To or CC header in the message contains an appropriate phrase, such as the display name (sometimes in quotation marks). This is distinct from the email address itself, which is often enclosed in angle brackets. Message headers are formatted automatically thus by most email software, e.g.

Fred Smith <fsmith@some.isp.com>
“Fred Smith” <fsmith@some.isp.com>

Spammers often harvest email addresses, but not the display names. They either omit the display name, guess one from the email address, or just make something up e.g.

To: <fsmith@some.isp.com>
To: “Fsmith” <fsmith@some.isp.com>
To: “Claudia Blenkinsop” <fsmith@some.isp.com>

However, in legitimate messages, the display names (if present) are usually valid. By means of a filter on the display name in the TO or CC line, these messages can bypass the normal spam checks, e.g.

If…

   TO/CC contains “Fred Smith” (case sensitive)

Then…

   Move message to Inbox folder

(N.B. The above filter should work whether or not the name in the header is included in quotation marks)

Ideally, the display name should include a character string which is not in the email address, to make it harder for the spammer to guess correctly. This display name should be included in the FROM header of all messages sent by the user, as this will be included in the entry in recipients’ address books, and hence in return messages.

Note: Messages from AOL may still be misidentified, as address headers in AOL messages do not seem to contain display names. There may be others too.

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None of the above tips are complete solutions; they’re merely designed to give you an idea of how to avoid the bulk of junk e-mails. Remember, even if you don’t get any SPAM, that doesn’t mean to say you won’t in the future. Following this guide could save you a lot of trouble later on.