-Spam-

`"By US Code Title 47, Sec.227(a)(2)(B), a computer/modem/printer meets the definition of a telephone fax machine.By Sec.227(b)(1)(C), it is unlawful to send any unsolicited advertisement to such equipment.By Sec.227(b)(3)(C), a violation of the aforementioned Section is punishable by action to recover actual monetary loss, or $500, whichever is greater, for each violation."`

NEWS FLASH! - Perpitrator of 419 African money scam sought! the infamous 419 Scam to get people to send money to Africa with the promise of large returns helping some poor non-existant soul get his funds freed may be stopped soon!

FREE anti-spam tip for your website! Everyone wants to put a link to their own email on their websites right? Well do NOT use the @ symbol in your address! Most browser will translate symbolic HTML entities back into their proper ascii values. The ascii value of 64 is the @ symbol. So what you want to do is substitute @ for the @ in your email address. This will prevent Spambots from picking up your email address when someone loads your page. You may even want to hide in a fake email just for the spambots and when this mailbox starts filling up you'll know where it came from! Browsers will decode this automatically when your email address is called up in the proper manner. Enjoy this FREE idea!

Spam is junk mail. It is named Spam because no one really likes it and the way things are going today it will never go away. Kind of like Spam in real life. Everyone with an Email gets spammed sometimes several times a week most several times a day. This is a waste of Internet resources and definitely everyone's time. This could be as little as moving the junk messages to your deleted folder on a web mail account or a waste of precious modem time for those dialing in. Either way, do you want to risk either not seeing or even deleting legitimate email from a friend or family member? If anyone who has been around Fax machines since they started may recall how often junk fax's used to come in. Since Fax's are and where mostly a business related item this junk could also result in a direct loss of business when you where not able to receive a fax because it was out of paper due to junk coming in unsolicited.

Here is my way of combating Spam. It is a difficult time consuming task but sometimes rewarding. First off, NEVER EVER click on the unsubscribe icon if they have one. This simply lets them know they have a valid email address with someone who takes the time to read it resulting in your email being put on even more lists! Second make sure your email program or web mail prints the FULL header information for your email. If you are on AOL you probably deserve to get spammed anyway. There will be several address's and IP address's you can feed into Sam Spade. Most of these should have an Admin or Sysop email address listed when you "Do stuff" on Sam Spade. Forward the offending unsolicited email to these address's as well as to the cybercrime email link on this page and ask them 'nicely' to stop sending unsolicited email to your address. Often the two best address's to work off on the email message will be the website for whatever product they are trying to hype by bothering you and the unsubscribe link itself. Often any other address or web sites that are in the message will either be forged or nonexistent. Don't feel bad if you forward the email to any of the addresses in there even if they are forged. If a big company's name is being used (either they are inadvertently carrying the email or there name is just forged) they probably ought to be told so they can do something to protect their name and assets. It is possible for some sneakier spammer's to use an IP's own email system to forward junk email to millions of names on their lists as well. If they start getting messages from irate internet people they may be able to do something about this on their own end as well. Another thing, never give out your actual email address. Instead use a substitute such as junk@mail.com. If these folks keep getting enough junk bounced back to them maybe they will at least have to move their own email operation around a bit once in a while. Every time we make them work harder we win a little bit. Also, if you run a website or post to Usenet you may want to add in some garbage letters into your Email such as Q's or Z's that aren't commonly used in names. This way if your email is picked up while bumping around inside the Internet for spamming purposes they will be sending out their garbage to a invalid address.

Some people may remember the early promises of cable television companies and how they where going to make TV commercial free. Can anyone name a channel that is commercial free? Even the pay-per channels are packed with advertisements sometimes hidden in the guise of programming guides. Cable TV has gotten more and more expensive every year. They are trying to do this to the Internet as well telling you need to spend $50 a month for a cable or DSL line just so that one person can surf once in a while. Most of the time your computer spends waiting isn't spent downloading it is spent waiting for the Internet. If you go onto a cable line that you share with the rest of your town or city you may actually even increase the lag time noticeably over a modem and a decent local Internet provider. I would like to point out one thing about the cable company's advertisements. First, they like to point out that weather may affect a dish's reception. Where do you think the cable company's get their signal's from? If you drive around your town enough you may notice a dish farm somewhere this will likely be the source. Also they like to talk about the quality of digital cable I can't recall seeing too many box's with a SVHS output on the back. The third thing that they like to brag about is needing a seperate box for seperate TV's with dish's, if you have digital cable you are in the same boat.

One thing you may want to try before and after getting one of these 'wonder-devices' is to drop into a dos prompt and ping a website on the net that you use often. One of the important numbers that will come back will be the TTL (Time To Live) number. The lower this number is the better. This is how long it takes to get a response from the site you are pinging. This is far more important than the maximum possible bandwidth you may get for playing online games, which just send out small packets and get the same back. How many websites do you visit where you will actually be downloading a 10MB video clip? Very few... Another thing, when you are browsing with your dialup modem if it is external watch the lights if it is an internal modem add the lights to the Systray. You will see just how busy your modem actually is. Most of the time both the send and receive lights will be off. This means you are waiting for the Internet itself instead of the so-called modem bottleneck. $20 a month is more than enough for an Internet service. One of the biggest companies advocating Spam is Micro$oft. They have a nice little 'anti-piracy' option called a passport authentication system you are required to use with Windows XP. This requires your email and allows Micro$oft and its partners to fill your mailbox with advertisements about its new and not so new products. Another thing, not having a contract in print is kind of ridiculous. Compu$erve gave the JPG standard of graphics the push off it needed by trying to copy write GIF images. Maybe the push that JPG got from Compu$erve will give the same boost to Linux! :-)

TOOLS:

This handy utility will scan your PC and your registry looking for scum & adware entries/files etc and allow you to delete them. Very handy!

Mailwasher! This handy program works with POP email accounts to automatically filter out spam and potential spam. This handy program allows you to either delete the mail on your server or bounce it back to the sender. Allows you to keep a friends list in case someone in your family has a get rich quick scheme ;-) and updates its own list from blackhole sites! In addition this program also uses heuristics to catch spammers who may be wittier than others and try to sneak in with a legimate looking email. As always if its listed here its gotta be *FREE!*

Spampal. I don't know why they call this one spampal, its certainly not friendly to spam! Well I guess if you really wanted you could read your *SPAM* once it is done sorting! This is another freeware utility for POP email accounts that works off lists from the internet to identify and tag spam. Spampal also allows you to maintain a whitelist to make sure friends email gets throuh in case they have a sloppy mail server.

Spameater charges for its fancier features but I listed it here because it goes one step further than most email programs. Like my manual spam combatting procedures (almost impossible to implement manually due to the large volumes of spam nowadays) it will automatically complain to the senders internet provider! This is one way to make sure the spammers stay busy moving around everytime they get the golden boot. :-) It still has plenty of punch if you use the freeware version and don't register.

Sugarplum spam poison! This is a CGI script that generates false email address's and can be used to track down which web spider the spammer is making use of.

Popup ad's getting on your nerves? Try this handy little utility:

LINKS:

National Do not call list
Massachusetts Do not call list

I'm not sure how I forgot about this obvious link for so long. The Better Business Bureau. Notice it is a .ORG which means non-profit. They have a contact us link which should prove useful for those get rich quick schemes about royal familys needing help smuggling millions of dollars of gold out of their war torn countries. :-)

SPAM LAWS! - a sort of 'Spartan' site but has what it needs! Useful information!

Newstory on an unfortunate victory for spammers. ORBZ owner pulls plug on his blackhole site.

Ellen Spertus recently fought back in court against Kozmo!

Sam-Spade information digger and VERY useful!

UXN Spam Combat very useful! Like Sam-Spade

reverse email information from searchenginez.com lame on spelling GREAT on usefulness!

www.freewarehof.org/spam.html

This pages contains many useful ideas and links. Nicely assembled!