Fighting and preventing spams

Everyone with some profile on Internet and/or the WWW is now receiving daily several spams, and often with multiple copies. Spamming can be defined as unsollicited e-advertising or unsollicited sending of e-mail to numerous e-addresses. Faked mail and so-called `chain letters' are also included in that category.

Spams cover a wide range of matters from phony scientific claims, religious/philosophical announcements, houses in Florida, Persian carpets, surpluses of American stocks, sex/porno offers, and more generally dubious products, games, quasi-legal services, get-rich-quickly schemes, huge lists of e-mail addresses, and so on. Their originators can be hustlers, scammers, genuine advertisers, as well as candid, clueless or clumsy people. Spams cost the senders very little to be sent -- most of the costs are paid for by the recipients and/or the carriers.

The `subject' line of these messages is often intriguing and sometimes deceptive, but, with some experience based on the standard profile of one's own usual received mail, one can detect the spams and erase them before reading. But there is of course certainly a danger of removing a relevant message.

Here are a few tips to prevent, reduce and fight spamming:

never, ever, respond to a spam (this would validate your e-address); rather file a complaint with the ISP (see below);
avoid registering your e-address in any public list and make sure your postmaster is not registering it for you [astronomers, please note that StarHeads's master file of URLs is protected and not made available in order to protect you against spams and massive mailings];
never request information via e-mail or the web if you are not sure your e-address will not be included subsequently in an e-mailing list;
avoid registering your e-address in lists of attendees at conferences, meetings, and so on;
never drop a business card with an e-address in an exhibitor collecting box;
avoid returning registration/guarantee cards for any kind of product with your e-address;
never circulate yourself a list of e-addresses without the explicit consent of the persons concerned;
set up filters on your mailing system (but be aware that headers of incoming messages could be forged);
be aware that some organizations are setting up schemes to help us avoiding spams (see below).

No system is perfect though and it might still be more efficient for some time to simply erase those messages as they come in. Never retaliate by sending back huge files as the `return' addresses might be bogus and your messages would bounce back, polluting the networks and giving unnecessary work to postmasters.

Check out the following pages for further information:

Refer also to the paper `How to Avoid Unwanted Email' by Robert J. Hall in the March 1998 issue of the Communications of the ACM.

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