SQUASHING SPAM

By Dale Tincher, May 1998 (Authorized Typed Reprint)

Do you remember when you first discovered email? It was great. You could communicate with everyone in the office, and in the virtual world. You tested the system by sending a message to yourself. You sent email to friends. Later, you checked your emailbox. No messages? You went to lunch and enjoyed a sandwich. You returned and sent more test email to yourself. E-mail was working, no one was writing.

Times have changed. A recent American Management survey of 400 Human Resources managers indicated that email has replaced the telephone as the "primary means of business communications". Today, email fills some of us with dread. We click on "receive mail" and watch as we see too many messages appear. We wonder how we get so much mail. How does everyone seem to have us on their mailing list? Friends report they have canceled their listserve subscriptions because they feel so overwhelmed with the spam and volume of messages. Worse yet, one stated that he missed a client call because it was buried in a pile of junk email.

Clever and devious minds are at work, exploiting our email addresses. If you type "spamming" in your search engine, you will receive a list of documents that explain spamming and tell you how to avoid spammers. I'll save you the time and explain a few basic ways that junk emailers know about us.

I learned the hard way about one of the newest techniques of gathering email addresses. I was reading about some of the new free software tools that save hours of manual labor. One of these looked very promising. The description advertised that the company would list my URL with virtually all the major search engines. I recalled how time-consuming and tedious my prior submissions had been. Another advertised that they would review my HTML code and my meta tags. They would show me how to improve my code and obtain more hits for me. Another claimed that they could read my entire site and create meta tags for me. One promised to test my web site provider's response and check my links for broken links.

I pondered, why are they free? Could there be a free lunch. After all, the Internet is basically free. I had two new domains to register and, being busy, thought this would be a good way to save some time, plus see if my code was okay. Perhaps they are simply trying to upgrade me to other services. I went into a submission frenzy and fed their databases with my name, fax number, phone number, contact name, addresses, etc. Obviously, this linked to my personal and business Web page.

My HTML code was fine, other than some inconsequential items. It "was" nice to make one domain name submission and have the service submit to five or six search engines. I assumed the services worked as promised. But, best to verify. Four days later, the domains weren't registered. It was still early, I hoped.

Suddenly, I was quite popular on the Internet. During the past three days, I have received more than twenty spam messages in addition to the listserve email I usually get. I had read about spam problems, but had received few myself. Twenty messages weren't too many, but I realized that they would increase. I began looking for a keyboard with a larger delete key and a larger hard drive. Perhaps a spammer would notify me of such a product.

The email has have been interesting. Spammers promise to do everything that Reader's Digest promises me each month. They will make me wealthy, help me lose weight, help me increase my Web site visits, help me work at home on my computer four hours a day and make more money than I do now, deliver a wonderful vacation at cyber prices, buy flowers, and find a satisfying relationship.

I received one mysterious email about a free new legal resource from a legitimate sounding company. I bit and opened a site that I would not want co-workers to see me viewing. No one would have believed my explanation. "Sure", they would have said. One email notified me of the resignation of the president of a company that I had never heard of, from a company I had never heard of.

The email seldom has an identifiable return address. Interestingly, one of them told me how I could become a spammer myself. The message said "by simply feeding the spider program," it will collect for hours. The spider will go from Web site to targeted Web site providing you with thousands upon thousands of fresh TARGETED email addresses.... (Beginning to feel like fresh meat?) It continued, "For instance if you were looking for email addresses of Doctors in New York all you would do is .....

In summary, they (the spammers) will get you eventually. But, why help them. I knew better than using the "easy" way to submit my domains and check my code. But I lost my head. There is no easy way and no free lunch unless you call a spam sandwich a lunch. Happy surfing.