STOPPING SPAM It's a big subject, but here are some ideas and leads. (You won't stop it without paralyzing yourself. For example, registering a domain name will result in junk mail from people wanting to help you for a price.) SECURITY Security measures that prevent information from your computer being obtained, such as virus filters, adware detectors, and firewalls. SUSPICION Some information is obtained Even security warnings must be viewed with caution, some scumbags put up a fake message - even clicking on the X to close the window can activate their intrusion - better to reboot the computer. You can be almost paranoid. (Rolling your cursor over claimed links in the email may reveal the actual URL the link would lead you to. But sending email with links and graphics is poor practice in general and adds to points to trip a spam flag.) WHERE DO YOU GO? Some types of sites are notorious for getting your info when you visit them. Among them are: - erotic sites (though with the recent increase in spam it seems you'll get some of them anyway, particularly if you are aging thus are viewed as potential to purchase aids to performance - those advertisers and others selling pharmaceuticals etc. get email address and age somehow, probably from innocent-seeming sites that sell their customer list (VersaCheck software company is on my bad list for junk mail).) - music download sites (hey, most of those are not honest people and they appeal to the free-lunch mentality, so why do people not expect problems with them?). EMAIL FILTERS Vendors of email software are working on better methods of filtering. Those include "black listing" - giving your software a list of sending addresses you do not want to see mail from (surprisingly some active junk mail services use the same sender name repeatedly). ISPs are working on better methods of filtering, including stopping some before it gets far into their system (as handling it takes capacity which costs them). However, there are traps: - some are not very sophisticated. (For example, WeDoHosting.com's filter flags suspect email (rather than blocking) but seems erratic. Sometimes it falsely flags a friend's email and sometimes it does not, from the same single AOL address. In some cases it usually flags email from a certain type of mailing-list software used by companies I have asked to get it from.) - if you depend on a sending address being in your email software's address book you'll miss legitimate email from those who are not (including some who may have more than one email address or are sending you important information from someone else's account). A better way if you must use your address book as a filter is to put messages that do not match your address book into a quarantine folder to look through later. (I think the technique of matching to an address book is called "white listing". An internet hosting company in Toronto, Internet Light and Power, has "Adaptive Inheritance Technology" used with their iPermitMail white listing function, apparently to improve the technique. (It occurs to me that one improvement would be to add persons you reply to into the white list, on the theory they are not bad spammers (see FEEDBACK below). FEEDBACK If a company is legitimate and worthwhile but using poor practices I try to find time to tell them I will stop dealing with them unless they shape up. (Do not respond to most spam as it lets them know your email address is valid thus better to use than unverified ones.) YOUR RETURN & SENDING ADDRESS Using a ReplyTo address different than the account you send from adds points toward a spam flag. Using a forwarding service, such as some professional organizations offer, is one case as they are usually not sending accounts. Sending mail from a smartphone but using a Sending address different from the server used by your cellular service provider gets points. That's common now, as many people have Internet service from one company and phone service from another. (There appears to be a practice of lists of accounts, that spam filters can use to check that the claimed sending account is on the claimed sending server. I suspect it is possible to fake identification of the sending server.) And the "relay" transmittal situation - sending from email software on your computer through a webmail hosting service may add points. Your hosting service may advise to use a port different from the default. SOURCES OF INFORMATION Your email sofware should be able to show the "verbose header" with much detail of addresses and servers. You'll need some awareness of email composition and transmission features to fully understand the header. For example, in Outlook 2003 View|Options shows the header, in Outlook 2010 File|Properties does. Good luck! ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Intellectual property of Keith Sketchley Version 2015.01.16 Legalities detailed on http://www.keithsketchley.com/ apply. Use of advice and information contained in this file is at your risk. ------------------------------------------------------------------------- BACK in your browser should return you to the page you came here from.