This entire site only takes about 15 minutes to read, so it's highly recommended you go through it all for the greatest understanding. Continue to the introduction below, or Get Right To The Meat (page 1).

Introduction

The Spam Primer started in 1996 as a way to help people deal with a new problem: spam. Even then, author Randy Cassingham realized spam would become a huge problem for everyone who depends on e-mail (and it has: it's estimated that about 90 percent of all e-mail traffic is spam, which makes it difficult for legitimate e-mail to get through, and to find it among all the garbage!)

Spam has of course grown to be more than a nuisance: you can have your identity stolen and see all of your bank accounts drained. And that can easily happen! Take your time on this site and explore the various topics and concepts to make sure you understand them all. Each page is an easy-to-understand bite-sized chunk. Just click the link at the bottom of each page to move to the next one. Or you can look at the list below and choose the specific topic(s) you want to see.

Overwhelmed? Don't just shut your eyes and hope it will go away! It won't. Scammers want your money, and the less you know, the easier it is to get yours. You must protect yourself. Start with the Executive Summary, and then expand from there.

If you prefer, you can go directly to any of the pages that outline the whole thing to you:

Note: External links on any page open in a new tab or window so you don't lose your place.

About the Primer's Author

Randy Cassingham is the author and publisher of This is True, a weekly column reporting on bizarre-but-true news stories. True is one of the first e-mailed publications, so Randy clearly understands both e-mail, and the difficulties that spam causes us all. You're invited to go to the site for a free subscription to This is True -- of course, that requires verified opt-in (which you'll learn about shortly!)

A Note from the Primer's Author

In the grand scheme of things, who cares about your e-mail? I do. And everyone who wants the Internet to remain a cool and useful place should. It's not just because I make my living sending e-mail that people truly want. (I make absolutely sure of that by using "verified opt-in", a system which all mass e-mail publishers should use.)

I also am a serious Internet user. I'm online most of the day, most every day. I don't want garbage streaming into my mailbox, but I do want to get the mail I have asked for, or that enables me to do my job. Yet I get, or my filters block, tens of thousands of e-mails every month that I have made clear I do not want. Hundreds per day. That's not "cool and useful," that's a massive burden. And it's all because people who want to force us to read their scams, get-rich-quick schemes, and other bogus come-ons, or to steal our hard-earned money. And that's what the vast majority is: if it was a legitimate product or service, they wouldn't need to use unethical and illegal means to pitch it, would they?

Last Major Update to this site: 30 October 2011

--Randy Cassingham
Author and Publisher, This is True®

Next Page: What is Spam?