“And we’re back”…..for years I uttered that statement eight times every Saturday afternoon on the radio wave upon returning from a short bathroom…err, I mean commercial break.  It seems appropriate to utter that tried and true - or maybe it should be trite and true - sentence at this juncture as I return from a month-long hiatus from creating this column.  When last we were together, I promised you the reader some never fail methods for cutting down the amount of SPAM that is overflowing your inbox.

Too many of my acquaintances have simply given up on the SPAM issue.  Some have even gone so far as to change their e-mail address in order to start fresh.  While this is solution will work, it is only a short-term fix.  Besides, why should we have to bear the burden of change in our lifestyles to get rid of unsolicited advertising? That is like moving to a different house so you don’t get postal junk mail any more.

Anyway, I like challenges and I hate to give up, especially on principle.  It’s like Thomas Paine stated, "The harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph. What we obtain too cheap, we esteem too lightly; it is dearness only that gives everything its value. I love the man that can smile in trouble, that can gather strength from distress and grow brave by reflection. 'Tis the business of little minds to shrink; but he whose heart is firm, and whose conscience approves his conduct, will pursue his principles unto death."  So, with that weighty thought in our minds, let’s roll up our sleeves and get to work.

The first step in eliminating SPAM is much like the first step in eliminating cockroaches; understand what they are drawn to and eliminate it.  Most SPAMMERS get their addresses from mailing list collectors.  These collectors usually obtain your e-mail address from a standard set of sources that are easy to get to.  The two most common are Newsgroup postings and Web Forms. 

For those of you who have never used Usenet News, you are really missing out.  These forums have been around since years before Tim Berners-Lee first published the first webpage at CERN and they contain a wealth of information generated via public discourse on just about every topic imaginable.  The double-edged sword of Usenet is that these discussions contain the e-mail address of those who post their thoughts and opinions so that you, as a user, can reply to the author with your own statements concerning the topic being discussed.  Unfortunately, SPAMMERS can use software to simply go through all of the millions of messages on Usenet, strip out the e-mail addresses of everyone that posted and viola, they have an instant list of e-mail addresses for your next advertisement of the thighmaster.   There are some creative things you can do to cut down on the effectiveness of software that mines for e-mail addresses in this manner and still allow free discourse to carry on.  By far the most effective and least convoluted method I have observed is to change your e-mail address in your newsreader to be something that, while not a valid e-mail address, is obvious as such and can be manually edited by anyone who wishes to correspond directly.  An example is changing my email address entry in Outlook Express so that it reads bill@nospam.beesley.org.  Someone reading a message and wanting to send me their thoughts would just hit ‘reply’ and then manually cut out the ‘nospam’ part of the e-mail address while SPAMMERS using automated mailers would be foiled from reaching me because nospam.beesley.org is not a valid domain.  This is working now, but it would not take all that much effort to create more sophisticated software that can recognize or even do a quick check for the validity of an e-mail address and we are once again back at square one in the war.

The second popular SPAM collection methodology is Web Forms.  It seems like everywhere we go on the web these days someone wants us to fill in a form for a contest, more information, or just so we can view ‘private’ content.  Be careful before you give your e-mail address as some companies sell their mailing lists to anyone who will pay the money.  Make sure you read the disclosure policies of the web site, understand, and agree with them before you give out your e-mail address to a third party.  As an example, my website, the Digital Café (www.digitalcafe.org) has forms but we never, ever, ever give out anyone’s e-mail address for any reason. Alternatively, you could do what I have done and sign up for a free mail service like Excite, Yahoo or HotMail and give that address out for the junk mailers and keep your primary e-mail address for those you really want sending you messages.

There are many other ways e-mail addresses are collected.  Folks who are on the same ISP as you can usually look at lists of other users.  If you register a domain name, your e-mail address automatically gets posted as a contact on that domain.  SPAMMERS even do what is known as dictionary walks against well known domains such as AOL by sending to every common name at aol.com so if you happen to have bill@aol.com or jim@aol.com, expect to get a fair amount of e-mail advertising.

So, even with keeping your name out of Usenet, off of web sites, and generally keeping your e-mail address a closely guarded secret that only the folks behind the triple fence at the NSA should have knowledge of it, it is nearly impossible to keep off the SPAM rolls.  Thus, in addition to all of the above I wholeheartedly recommend using software to your advantage to automatically filter out some of the junk.  You can use relatively simple techniques like in-box rules to send any mail where you are not listed as a recipient to a folder called SPAM that you can peruse at your leisure.  Another method is to check with your ISP to see if they do mail filtering with tools like BrightMail (http://www.brightmail.com/) or Procmail (http://www.impsec.org/email-tools/procmail-kit/procmail-kit.html).  I know that the ISP formerly known as Telepath (God Bless you David Tingler, we miss you!) uses this, but I understand that Inter.Net who bought them doesn’t.

You can also subscribe to third party filtering services like Spamcop (http://spamcop.net/) who, for a small fee, will take care of the work for you.  I have used these types of services in the past and found them quite effective.

Thus, there is hope for those of us who want to keep our e-mail addresses useful.  In the words of Pete Holiday, "Capitalism needs to function like a game of tug-of-war. Two opposing sides need to continually struggle for dominance, but at no time can either side be permitted to walk away with the rope."   Here’s to hoping you can keep a little more control over your end of the rope.  If you have any questions or thoughts I may have missed, drop me an e-mail.  Just don’t use the subject “You too can increase your breast size!”