What can you do to fight spam?

Question

After asking the question "who's behind the spam on myspace?" and receiving no decent answers I decided to do a little research myself, and found this article from wikipedia.org. http://www.spamhaus.org/rokso/index.lasso
On this page it list 200 known spammers who are responsible for 80 percent of your spam on myspace, your e-mail, Youtube, your blog site etc. Research these people and you'll find out that some of them might live just down the road from you. For example spammer "Laura Betterly" who lives over in Clearwater, although apparently she runs a "legitemate" business now.

P.S. Research this act CAN-SPAM Act.

Answer 1

Avoid SPAM

Anti-SPAM services often makes it hard to get the e-mail that you want. So you want to take measures on your own to avoid SPAM.

Unsolicited e-mail has become so prevalent that people with a brand new e-mail address begin to get SPAM right away. The only way to avoid this problem is to start taking measures to avoid it. I have some accounts that receive over 1,000 SPAM messages per day. Certainly, I take steps to minimize the amount of time that I spend managing this problem.

Yes, you should show an E-mail address on your website, MySpace and other people contact oriented websites. This address must be one that you can change. What would be the point of having a website with no way for someone to contact you electronically?

If you have a website, use an e-mail alias. Consider a displayed address as Temporary. This address would be set up to forward e-mail to your regular e-mail address. Eventually, that e-mail address will attract too much SPAM. When the SPAM increases again, you can select a different alias. Use an address such as [e-mail] or [e-mail]

Maintain a free web-based e-mail address, such as Hotmail or Yahoo for registering products. Check this e-mail just to REPORT and Delete SPAM. These free services work hard to avoid SPAM. Test this address regularly to ensure that the service still works; so that when you DO use it, it does work. If it stops working, simply get another e-mail address and test it before using it.

Tell your friends to NEVER register your e-mail address on any website. This means DO NOT send me an on-line greeting card. DO NOT use the on-line group member feature to invite me to join the on-line group. DO NOT use a website's feature to invite me to see your on-line photos. Tell them specifically that your e-mail address is PRIVATE. If they do wish to share something with you, they can e-mail you directly first. At this point, you would give them permission, along with the TEMPORARY e-mail address that you use for this purpose.

Send or Forward e-mail to a large list of e-mail addresses using the BCC field. (BCC refers to Blind Carbon Copy). You should not be sharing other people's e-mail addresses with the whole group. Do not use REPLY ALL, unless you know that everyone already knows everyone else and you really want everyone to have the reply. You should not multiply the originator's mistake.

Most e-mail programs have a REPLY ALL button. It would be great if all e-mail addresses were copied to the BCC field when this button is used.

You should be careful when you Report SPAM. Try not to report your friends by mistake. This may hurt their electronic communications. If your friend is sending you TOO MANY jokes and other e-mail, just ask them to STOP.

While SPAM blocking tools and E-mail approval software works well, it is best to simply avoid SPAM, rather than ignore it. At some point, your SPAM or BULK folder will have too much e-mail in it.

I do recommend that you own a Domain Name that can forward specific e-mail addresses to your regular e-mail INBOX. One or more names can be your Permanent Alias, and others can be your Temporary Alias; which can be forwarded to the Permanent address if you wish. Not all Domain Name providers perform this service.

If your e-mail address is reported as SPAM by others, be sure to use an alternate e-mail address to contact those people.

The only way that the Internet can continue to work for everyone is more education about the simple Rules of the Road. People will FLOCK away from the Internet, or not use their e-mail if the SPAM problem continues. Let's all work to make the Internet a useful tool.

Answer 2

Use a 'throwaway' account, in other words open a free email account and use that when you fill out forms on the web, for message boards, blogs, etc. Keep your primary email just for family, friends, and known legitimate buisness. It's not 100% foolproof, but nothing really is. Good luck

Answer 3

Nothing. Spam is legal as long as you have an"opt-out" option. Not that opting out actually helps.

Answer 4

I simply don't open the can. Spam doesn't really have any fingers, so it can't open the can by itself. ;-)