Help with Spam and Phishing

...and Other E-mail Pests
by Randy Cassingham

The basics of spam, "phishing" and other e-mail pests, how they got your address in the first place -- and what to do now that you're inundated.

 
A Brief Introduction
as to Why I Care

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. And that's what the vast majority is: if it was a legitimate product or service, they wouldn't need to use unethical and often illegal means to pitch it, would they?

--Randy Cassingham
Author and Publisher, This is True®
and the True Stella Awards

This Site is a Public Service

This site is brought to you as part of a campaign by the owners of large verified opt-in e-mail publications, such as the author of Spam Primer and others listed below who work to get this sort of common-sense information out to the people who matter -- the victims of daily spam. You can help by pointing others to this site, and by supporting organized efforts such as CAUCE and Spamcon. Another good site is maintained by the well-known anti-spammer Scott Hazen Mueller at http://spam.abuse.net/spam/ -- this site also contains useful information for sys admins on how to secure your site against abuse from spammers who want to steal your resources. It also contains very good general information on spam and how end users can filter it out -- in much more detail than I can fit here.

Such sites do need your support. Consider this: without them, the spam problem could have been worse than it already is!

SpamPrimer.com is supported by advertising (on every page except this one), which pays for the time to keep this site researched and up-to-date as well as the cost of hosting these pages. Because the text is constantly updated, it is critical that you do not copy the text and send it to others, but rather send the URL to people you think need the information. Besides: the text is protected by copyright, and copying it is stealing. Don't be a crook just like the spammers!

We thank you if you read this site carefully, and we thank you for your help to stop spam and other unsolicited Internet junk mail by giving your support to CAUCE, SpamCon, and other anti-spam organizations, and by following the advice given in this primer.

About the Primer's Author

Randy Cassingham is the author and publisher of This is True, a weekly newspaper column reporting on bizarre-but-true news stories, and the True Stella Awards, which details real cases of outrageous lawsuits. Both publications offer free subscriptions and, of course, require verified opt-in.

This Spam Primer originated as an extraordinarily large "author's note" in This is True, a pioneering e-mail publication that's been online since 1994.

The "large verified opt-in e-mail publications" that support Spam Primer include:

Please pass the URL for this site to others you think could benefit from the information here. The more people that truly understand spam, the harder it will make things for spammers.

Copyright © 1996-2008 by Randy Cassingham, All Rights Reserved. All broadcast, publication, retransmission, copying or storage, including on CD-ROM, listservers, BBSs, Web sites, "FTP" archives, or anywhere else, is strictly prohibited without prior written permission (contact the author).

"This is True" is a registered trademark of ThisIsTrue.inc and is used with permission.

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