Friday, November 15, 2002
Hotmail & Spam
Posted by Jason Dunn in "OFF-TOPIC" @ 01:00 AM
I often here this accusation bandied about - "Microsoft sells your Hotmail address to spammers, how else could we get so much spam?". To be honest, I pretty much believed it. I wanted proof, however, so I registered a new Hotmail account three weeks ago. I log in every few days, but the email address I used doesn't exist anywhere online.
The results? No spam at all.
I was quite surprised, because I thought even from brute-force username guessing the spammers would have found me. There are ways in which you open yourself up to spam vulnerability however, usually without knowing it. How? Keep reading.
Don't Confirm Email Address
You know how some spammers have a "click here to remove" link at the bottom? Be careful about clicking on that - some spammers will use a link like that to harvest legitimate email addresses, because if a link gets a click, that means the email got to someone on the other end, and that's valuable information to spammers. Ditto for "reply with REMOVE in the subject link - we'll take you off our mailing list, promise!". When you verify that your email address is active, spammers will in turn sell that valid email address to other spammers, and the amount of spam you get explodes. If it's a legitimate newsletter that you signed up for, un-subscribe - almost all newsletter owners will honour un-subscribe requests and often have automated systems for doing so.
Spam Trap Your Way to Happiness
What can you do to protect yourself from spam? The first thing is to register a "spam trap" email account. Hotmail, Yahoo Mail- anything free will do. When you sign up for ANYTHING online that asks for your email, whether it be a Web site or a trial software download, use this spam trap email address. Check it every week or so to keep it active, but don't use it for any real email correspondence (if you do, you'll be forced to check it more often to keep up with legitimate email). Only give out your real email address to other people - not to forms on Web sites.
If you own a domain and control the email aliasing on it, you can even get clever by using a specific email alias for each forum or program download - and when you start getting spam on that alias, shut it off of bounce it from your domain. This has the side benefit of allowing you to figure out who is selling your email address if you start to get spam to a specific address.
Spam Filtering Helps
The other thing you can do is get a spam filtering solution. I've tried out many of them on the market, but I found that every filtering solution I tried would catch the "good" email, put it into a folder, and I'd miss it. Or I'd spend more time going through the "suspect" folder than I would if I just deleted the spam in the first place. Spam-fighting tools that take up more time than the spam itself are useless to me. I found one application that I've been happy enough to keep however: Cloudmark SpamNet. It's a free application that plugs into Outlook (and only Outlook so far, which is a bummer), and it works quite well. I'm so confident in it that I have it set to mark my spam as read as soon as it arrives, move it to the Delete Items folder, and upon exit Outlook purges my deleted items. There are days that go by when I don't see a single spam message! Spamnet isn't perfect (lately I'm seeing more spam), but it's the best I've found and conceptually it's amazing:
"Imagine, a spam email message lands in your email, you click delete and it disappears from your Inbox - and the Inbox of your family, your friends and the entire world. Cloudmark SpamNet is a worldwide spam-fighting community that gives you spam-free email just for deleting the spam from your own Inbox. Join SpamNet now and contribute to the global fight against spam. Although spam seems to be invading everyone's email, only a relatively small number of spammers send out the billions of spam messages polluting the Internet. By reporting the spam you receive, you will contribute to the growing community of spam fighters dedicated to eradicating spam. Just like Napster allowed us to share a central list of our favorite music, Cloudmark Spamnet allows us to share a central list of spam. Individually this reported spam isn't very powerful, but the collective reports of millions of email users networked together blocks virtually all spam on the Internet."
Spam Can Be Minimized
Spamnet and a spam trap email account are two tools that have kept my spam under control for a while now. If you have an overwhelming amount of spam, you may want to consider doing the same. You can download Spamnet for free from their site. It's not a perfect solution to stopping spam, but it's a step in the right direction towards spam-free living.
The results? No spam at all.
I was quite surprised, because I thought even from brute-force username guessing the spammers would have found me. There are ways in which you open yourself up to spam vulnerability however, usually without knowing it. How? Keep reading.
Don't Confirm Email Address
You know how some spammers have a "click here to remove" link at the bottom? Be careful about clicking on that - some spammers will use a link like that to harvest legitimate email addresses, because if a link gets a click, that means the email got to someone on the other end, and that's valuable information to spammers. Ditto for "reply with REMOVE in the subject link - we'll take you off our mailing list, promise!". When you verify that your email address is active, spammers will in turn sell that valid email address to other spammers, and the amount of spam you get explodes. If it's a legitimate newsletter that you signed up for, un-subscribe - almost all newsletter owners will honour un-subscribe requests and often have automated systems for doing so.
Spam Trap Your Way to Happiness
What can you do to protect yourself from spam? The first thing is to register a "spam trap" email account. Hotmail, Yahoo Mail- anything free will do. When you sign up for ANYTHING online that asks for your email, whether it be a Web site or a trial software download, use this spam trap email address. Check it every week or so to keep it active, but don't use it for any real email correspondence (if you do, you'll be forced to check it more often to keep up with legitimate email). Only give out your real email address to other people - not to forms on Web sites.
If you own a domain and control the email aliasing on it, you can even get clever by using a specific email alias for each forum or program download - and when you start getting spam on that alias, shut it off of bounce it from your domain. This has the side benefit of allowing you to figure out who is selling your email address if you start to get spam to a specific address.
Spam Filtering Helps
The other thing you can do is get a spam filtering solution. I've tried out many of them on the market, but I found that every filtering solution I tried would catch the "good" email, put it into a folder, and I'd miss it. Or I'd spend more time going through the "suspect" folder than I would if I just deleted the spam in the first place. Spam-fighting tools that take up more time than the spam itself are useless to me. I found one application that I've been happy enough to keep however: Cloudmark SpamNet. It's a free application that plugs into Outlook (and only Outlook so far, which is a bummer), and it works quite well. I'm so confident in it that I have it set to mark my spam as read as soon as it arrives, move it to the Delete Items folder, and upon exit Outlook purges my deleted items. There are days that go by when I don't see a single spam message! Spamnet isn't perfect (lately I'm seeing more spam), but it's the best I've found and conceptually it's amazing:
"Imagine, a spam email message lands in your email, you click delete and it disappears from your Inbox - and the Inbox of your family, your friends and the entire world. Cloudmark SpamNet is a worldwide spam-fighting community that gives you spam-free email just for deleting the spam from your own Inbox. Join SpamNet now and contribute to the global fight against spam. Although spam seems to be invading everyone's email, only a relatively small number of spammers send out the billions of spam messages polluting the Internet. By reporting the spam you receive, you will contribute to the growing community of spam fighters dedicated to eradicating spam. Just like Napster allowed us to share a central list of our favorite music, Cloudmark Spamnet allows us to share a central list of spam. Individually this reported spam isn't very powerful, but the collective reports of millions of email users networked together blocks virtually all spam on the Internet."
Spam Can Be Minimized
Spamnet and a spam trap email account are two tools that have kept my spam under control for a while now. If you have an overwhelming amount of spam, you may want to consider doing the same. You can download Spamnet for free from their site. It's not a perfect solution to stopping spam, but it's a step in the right direction towards spam-free living.
