Dealing with SPAM

Fisrt of all, what is spam?
Spam is unsolicited, junk mail of any content. You didn’t ask for it, you got it, it’s spam. It’s actually more then that…

How much spam is around?
Many estimates of the amount of spam is sent put that figure around 25% of the available bandwidth of many servers, smaller ISPs might actually have system slowdowns from bulk sends. This is something that concerns all ISPs but…

Why isn’t my ISP doing something about it?
Because they’re waiting for the US government to take action and do something about it. There’s a potential issue of free speech in some aspects of spam and, since the DOJ action against Microsoft, ISPs aren’t ready to stick their necks out across the board. Also, most ISPs are already on a shoestring budget, leaving them to just deal with the identified gross offenders of the ISPs Terms of Service.

But why the constant send out of obvious bullshit?
You got that right. There are two aspects to this. One: is fraud by definition in US law. More on that below under “Who’s really sending me this bullshit.” The second is why is somebody or somebodys are sending this at all? Well, the more sent items, the more some schmuck loser is paid. If a spam is replied to, then even more fractions of a penny they make. We’re talking about one of the ultimate sweatshop slavery jobs around.

Why isn’t the government doing anything about it?
This is a issue that pits the common citizen against big business…and the biggest business around; the US government. Congress has failed to address and take action in every legislative period the issue of unsolicited junk mail. That’s right; your elected officials avoid enacting any legislation to prohibit spam because they don’t want to step on the toes of the other spammers out there: junk mailers. It’s the same thing but different media formats. State governments have tried to enact legislation to allow the citizen to stop jumk mail but in every case, have been stopped by those very same junk mailer organizations evoking the idea of free speech. It’s a strong lobby out there. But that’s not the spammer on the computer…but it is in a sense.

What recourse do I have?
Plenty. Get ready, what will follow is something I want everyone to read and understand.

First thing is that a hot commodity in the spam world is a valid E-mail. There are programs written that guess by generating E-mail addresses. Spam is sent out to groups of “guessed” E-mails. This is blunt method, and an incredible consumption of a ISPs servers bandwidth.

Some anti-spam groups like to divide spam into two kinds: the so-called Opt-in and Opt-out. This is a poor way to describe spam types. But just so everyone knows where it came from, “Opt-in” is the E-mail you get from signing on for receiving notices of new products, updates, etc. Souhds innocent, right? Wrong. Companies are out to make a buck and they sell lista of people for other marketers to use. Rmember in the product registration the questionnaire? Well, they got information from you…and it’s sold…and sold again…til it gets to the obvious scum bags. In a sense you asked for it…but not knowing what could happen.
“Opt-out” is a type of E-mail that gets you to reply with the statements to “click here” to stop getting any more spam from them. DON’T EVER RESPOND! When you do, the entire universe will know your E-mail. BTW: some spammers cite a Congressional session and a Assembly Bill from years past, then ask you to “click here.” That’s fraud, and a crime in the US. See below under “The FTC.”

Second, we need to see if one of those scum bags have stuck something called “spyware” in your machine. Spyware is code that tells the sender a lot of information about your and what is on your machine. It’s a virus in it’s ability to do damage. For instance, some of the Klez family of worms would grab E-mail addresses from your Adress Book and send it out. Wonder why all sorts of spam of a certain type suddenly showed up? I want every one of you out there reading this to go to

http://www.lavasoftusa.com/

and download and install Ad-Aware 5. It’s freeware and Lavasoft is really into privacy issues. You should read more about privacy at Steve Gibson’s website at:
http://www.grc.com

There will be more on privacy and firewalls later in Part 3 later, too.

This is the end of the first part. You have or will do this:
1. downloaded Ad-aware and installed it
2. run Ad-aware and watch for installed components hidden in your machine’s memory and/or the registry and/or somewhere on your HDs. You will be prompted to save, ignore, backup, or delete any spyware. My recommendation is to delete it! Sometimes spyware is attached to a valid program. My favorite is the one that attached to internet explorer as a regirstered extension…a so-called K drive called Alexa…

Questions? You can E-mail me at willuplay1@cox.net I’m a rabid anti-spam crusader and I damn well want to see spam stopped by legislation. Meanwhile, we all can act to protect ourselves from this abuse.