Fighting Spam

How prevalent is Spam? According to Scott McAdams, OMA Public Affairs and Communications Department (www.oma.org):

“Studies show unsolicited or “junk” e-mail, known as spam, accounts for roughly half of all e-mail messages received. Although once regarded as little more than a nuisance, the prevalence of spam has increased to the point where many users have begun to express a general lack of confidence in the effectiveness of e-mail transmissions, and increased concern over the spread of computer viruses via unsolicited messages.”

In 2003, President Bush signed the “Can Spam” bill, in December of 2003 which is the first national standards around bulk unsolicited commercial e-mail. The bill, approved by the Senate by a vote of 97 to 0, prohibits senders of unsolicited commercial e-mail from using false return addresses to disguise their identity (spoofing) and the use of dictionaries to generate such mailers. In addition, it prohibits the use of misleading subject lines and requires that emails include and opt-out mechanism. The legislation also prohibits senders from harvesting addresses off Web sites. Violations constitute a misdemeanor crime subject to up to one year in jail.

One major point that needs to be discussed about this: spam is now coming from other countries in ever-greater numbers. These emails are harder to fight, because they come from outside our country’s laws and regulations. Because the Internet opens borders and thinks globally, these laws are fine and good, but do not stop the problem.
So what do you do about this? Her are the top 5 Rules to do to protect from spam.

Number 1: Do what you can to avoid having your email address out on the net.

There are products called “spam spiders” that search the Internet for email addresses to send email to. If you are interested, do a search on “spam spider” and you will be amazed at what you get back. Interestingly, there is a site, WebPoison.org, which is an open source project geared to fight Internet “spambots” and “spam spiders”, by giving them bogus HTML web pages, which contain bogus email addresses

A couple suggestions for you:
a) use form emails, which can hide addresses or also
b) use addresses like sales@company.com instead of your full address to help battle the problem.
c) There are also programs that encode your email, like jsGuard, which encodes your email address on web pages so that while spam spiders find it difficult or impossible to read your email address.

Number 2: Get spam blocking software. There are many programs out there for this. (go to www.cloudmark.com or www.mailwasher.net for example).

You may also buy a professional version. Whatever you do, get the software. It will save you time. The software is not foolproof, but they really do help. You usually have to do some manual set up to block certain types of email.

Number 3: Use the multiple email address approach.

There are a lot of free email addresses to be had. If you must subscribe to newsletters, then have a “back-up” email address. It would be like giving your sell phone number to your best friends and the business number to everyone else.

Number 4: Attachments from people you don’t know are BAD, BAD, BAD.

A common problem with spam is that they have attachments and attachments can have viruses. Corporations often have filters that don’t let such things pass to you. Personal email is far more “open country” for spammers. General rule of thumb: if you do not know who is sending you something, DO NOT OPEN THE ATTACHMENT. Secondly, look for services that offer filtering. Firewall vendors offer this type of service as well.

Number 5: Email services now have “bulk-mail” baskets.

If what you use currently does not support this, think about moving to a new vendor. The concept is simple. If you know someone, they can send you emails. If you don’t know them, put them in the bulk email pile and then “choose” to allow them into your circle. Spam Blocking software has this concept as well, but having extra layers seems critical these days, so it is worth looking into.

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Popularity: 15% [?]

Email Groups - Hidden Treasure Troves For Advertising A Blog

Something that has become increasingly popular since the Internet has grown are the email groups that are available through Yahoo, MSN, and other venues.

They are a great way to meet other people who have a common interest, and are very similar to the communities that are available through blogging sites.

There is plenty of diverse subjects and there are communities for just about any subject.

These groups can be a great place for people who have a blog about the subject and want to share it with other people.

Most of the time when you join a group, you are encouraged to take a moment and to introduce yourself. This is a great opportunity to tell people about your blog, but make certain that you don’t overdo it.

Just like with any of the other places you will advertise your blog, you want to make people want to go to your blog. If you are too overbearing, you will turn people off.

If your blog covers different subjects, you can advertise it on the other groups that cover those subjects as well.

Make certain that your post to the groups is interesting and that you let people know what it is that your blog is about. There’s nothing worse than getting taken to a blog under false pretenses.

When people visit your blog, make certain that you thank them for visiting and respond to comments that they leave.

If they know that you appreciate the time that they took, they are more likely to come back again.

Popularity: 20% [?]

BEWARE: New PayPal Phishing E-Mail Scam

I received an email this morning saying that my PayPal account had just put into a limited access mode. At first I was thinking what is limited access anyway? I mean, I never expected anything wrong with my account that I would receive this email from PayPal. I was a bit worried about having limited access as most of the online business owner knows that this is the major payment processor we use online.

The ID Theft Risk Management Specialist part of me kicked in and started studying this new email that was “apparently” from PayPal. At first glance, all appeared to be in order until I noticed the following discrepancies:

1. The email is not sending out from actual PayPal email. In the sender information, it is service@paypail.com Vs service @ paypal . com.

2. It provides an fraud case ID. I checked in my account based on the ID provided and I can’t found the record.

3. Another fraud email provided in the email: security@paypalfraudcheck.com Vs security or service @ paypal.com. And attempting to go to this domain automatically redirects to PayPal properly.

4. The way to remove the limit access is simply unreasonable. The email said this: “completing all of the checklist items will automatically restore your account access”.

1) Personal identification - a copy of one photographic ID from the following list:
- Passport - Driving license - National Identification card

2) Address verification - a copy of one of the following (online statements not accepted):
- Utility bill - less than 3 months old
- Bank statement - less than 3 months old

5. Last but not least, he send to my primary email address instead of my paypal email address.

Think about it, if you account is being limited access, that means your account is being monitored by Paypal, there is no way it will restore automatically by simply by submitting these documents. I am sure Paypal will go through the manual verification process in order to remove that access.

6. To further confirm it is a phishing email, I went to do domain whois check on the domain names provided. This screenshot below confirms that this domain does not belong to PayPal.

I found out this appeared to be one of the phishing email that send out by a guy named Ryan Gunness (according to the whois record) and it sound like the following email screenshot. And I received an answer back from spoof@paypal.com within 30 minutes of submitting this email that it is indeed a phishing email.

Popularity: 24% [?]

Tags: e-mail, email, paypal, phishing, scam, spoof, whois

Advertise Your Blog In Your Email Signature

November 17, 2008 by Rob White  
Filed under New Media Pro

1 Comment

If you have a blog that you are particularly proud of, and that you want to share with other people, there are a lot of free ways that you can get your blog noticed.

One of those ways is something that you do everyday, and that you may not even consider as a way to share your blog. Put the link to your blog in your e-mail signature.

Chances are that you send out e-mails more times that you can count during the day, Each time you send out an e-mail, you can advertise your blog by putting the address of your blog in your e-mail’s signature line.

It’s always a good idea to write something catchy like, “See what I am up to now”, or “Read my latest chapter of my fanfic here”, depending on what type of blog you have.

The thing to remember about putting an advertisement in your signature for your blog is to make it short, but eyecatching.

You want people to be interested enough to want to click on it, but you also don’t want to scare them off.

Just like it is with any advertisement, you want to give them just enough to be interested and take a closer look at what it is that you are advertising.

Think about what it is that your blog is about. What is really going to interest people about it and why they will want to visit. That is what you should include in your signature, and that is what is going to get people to go to your blog.

Popularity: 16% [?]

Tags: ad, advertise, blog, e-mail, email, sig, signature