SPAM…
Lets define it in Hacker’s Jargon meaning – SPAM – To crash a program or computer by overrunning a buffer with excessive large input data. Let’s make it simpler, sending data to the computer in large amount will make computer or program crash, this excessive large input data or large amount of data is called SPAM.
In computer industry things changes very quickly so meaning of SPAM is also changed, but its purpose is still the same. Now SPAM is largely known as un-wanted emails rather then large number of data.
Let’s move further, today SPAM is more then terrorism in a world. Unbelievable? Ask a person who receives more then 100 SPAM emails in his/her inbox. Everyday I get around 1500+ SPAM emails in my inbox. Bill Gates receives four million SPAM emails a day and wins title of most “SPAMMED” person in the world. But one thing is sure, SPAMMERS cares a lot about their victims(Will explain it later).
Before I start how you can prevent your inbox from getting SPAM email, let me explain you how SPAMMERS get your email id to send SPAM in your inbox, and how do they send SPAM? And then later will talk about preventing and more steps to be taken if you get SPAM.
HOW IT WORKS?
Its pretty simple, SPAMMERS don’t take a paper, pen and start hunting for email address in search engine or web sites, but they have a software developed which does it for them. Software will go through search engines, web sites and other online things, it searches for ‘@. sign, if that sign is found then it searches for more relevant characters like ‘.’ And some text before those symbols, if found then it is recognized as an email address, then it stored in memory. Email addresses they get from 1 – Newsgroups, 2 – Forums, 3 – Chat, 4 – Web site, 5 – Newsletter, 6 – Cheating… I will talk more about it in Prevention section to give u more clear picture of it.
HOW DO THEY SEND?
Again software and nothing else, they have developed software which will does that task for them, software connects to email server of receiver, and verifies whether that email address exists or not, and if exists then it sends email if not then goes for second email address. Now HOTMAIL’s email server allows to verify, but Yahoo!’s email server doesn’t allow to verify, so HOTMAIL is good for “SPAMMERS” but Yahoo! Is not. But it doesn’t mean that HOTMAIL users get more SPAM then Yahoo! Mail users, it depends on how you are using your account:), so don’t be in bad impression that HOTMAIL is not good.
HOW SPAMMERS TAKES CARE ABOUT ME?
I have seen SPAMMER take care of me a lot, they always finds nice ways for me to deal with my credits and helps me reduce my credit, so nice of them:D, also they help me gain my weight or loss my weight with no much hassle just a few medicines:D, height increase? No problem they are always there to help me out, you want job? No problem again they are always there to help me out. And when I am down with my work or something, then also they are there to cheer me up with sending me emails, which says you have won this and that:D wow, they cares so much about me. Sometimes they also get too much personal with me and do take care about my sentimental and other things a lot, and also they help me on that by sending me email on VIAGRA.
ANY OTHER THINGS?
Yeah they have got many other things, to generate email ids, again with the help of software they can general email ids and also they can verify against the email server.
Ok that’s enough of gyaan(knowledge) on how SPAM works, now lets talk about how to prevent from SPAM.
TIP 1: Don’t ever give out your email address on any un-trustworthy site, and if you still wants to give your email address, give email address which is not your primary email address.
TIP 2: Don’t subscribe to all newsletters which you feel like, instead have a thought whether newsletter from that site is really important for you to receive? If yes then you can subscribe.
TIP 3: When you are positing any message on forum of newsgroup, and you got to give your email address, don’t write it down like abc@.bc.com or something, instead write it like abc{at}abc.com and write a note to replace{at} with @. Also you can write like abc@.bcREMOVETHIS.comREMOTETHIS, you can think of number of combinations.
TIP 4: Do not ever give your email address to any PORN sites, 99% chances are there to have your inbox SPAMMED.
Okay, that’s enough of tips, now let’s see what you can do when you receive SPAM.
1 – When you receive SPAM email, open that email, and reach the end of the SPAM email, and see if there is a company name and also address of the company, and if it is there then you have to look for Unsubscribe from the List link, if any of the above things are not there, then you can complaint about that email to the following SPAM complaint sites.
https://ftc.gov/bcp/conline/edcams/spam/
https://rn.ftc.gov/pls/dod/wsolcq$.startup?Z_ORG_CODE=PU01
https://google.com/contact/spamreport.html
https://elsop.com/wrc/complain.htm
And more results here
https://search.yahoo.com/search?p=spam+complaint&sm=Yahoo%21+Search&fr=FP-tab-w
eb-t&toggle=1&ei=UTF-8
2 – Suppose you found Unsubscribe from List link and also Company name and Address, then click on Unsubscribe from Mailing List and follow the un-subscription process. After following process, if you still get the SPAM email from them, then you can complaint about them on above URLs.
CAN I SPAM?
Yes, you can also start SPAMMING if you want, but you need to follow certain rules.
1 – At the end of your email, you need to put your company name and also address of the company with Un-subscription link.
2 – If any user request for the Un-subscribing from your mailing list, then you have to make sure that email doesn’t go to him again in future, unless and until user requests, otherwise user can complaint about your SPAM email, and might also file a law suite on you.
CORPORATES INVOLVED WITH SPAM PREVENTION?
Yes, there are many companies who have fasten their belts to fight against SPAM, one of them is Microsoft, who has also filed many law suites against many SPAMMERS, also Yahoo! has filed law suites against several SPAMMERS, and also CAN-SPAM.
Due to character limit of MouthShut.com I have collected few links which you can follow to get more idea on SPAM protection.
Links:
https://microsoft.com/mscorp/safety/default.mspx
https://tswinteractive.ca/articles/no-spam.html
https://wordsandpeople.com/security/how-to-prevent-spam.htm
https://stuartmoffatt.com/howto/prevent_spam/
If you need any more information on SPAM protection you can always send M2M to me.
HAPPY SPAMMING… oops… SPAM PROTECTION.
