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Unsolicited Bulk Email .
'Unsolicited' means that the recipient has not given verifiable permission
for the message to be sent. 'Bulk' means that the message is sent as part of
a larger collection of messages, all having basically identical content.
Although there still seem to be some differences among the US Government,
the lawmakers, the antispam organizations and the spammers regarding what is
spam and what is not, identifying it is actually pretty easy: if you did not
ask for it, you did not sign up on a mailing list related to it, and did not
leave your e-mail address on a web form asking for more information on
it…it's spam! The spam issue is not about content, but solely about delivery
method. The content of spam is and has always been irrelevant.
Again, if it is sent unsolicited and in bulk, it is spam plain and simple. Sure we want spam to stop. Nobody wants their
e-mail address cycling around from spammer to spammer. We can delete it, but
have you ever stopped to consider how much time we actually spend each day
hitting the 'Delete' button? We should not have to beg to be removed from
something we did not ask to be put on in the first place! So where do we
draw the line? When do we start thinking it is not worth logging into our
email account to read our messages? Despite the effort of thousands of angry
spam victims pushing for stronger laws against spammers over the last few
years, not much progress has been done in this respect. Moreover, in January
2004 the U.S.
Government has passed the CANSPAM Act, a law backed overwhelmingly by
spammers and large corporations, because it legalized spamming instead of
banning it. With the passage of CAN-SPAM, spamming has become legal
throughout the United States. Now 23 million U.S. businesses can all begin
spamming email addresses as long as they give users a way to opt-out. What
CAN-SPAM makes illegal is the use of open proxies or any form of resource
misappropriation as well as use of false headers, which for the top spammers
to avoid is business as usual.
We will not argue here about the motives of the US law makers to pass the
CAN-SPAM, but rather focus on the problem of doing something about the spam
in your mailbox. By doing more than "just hitting delete", you are helping
to solve the problem. We should all exercise our right of control, or we
will lose it.
The million dollar question is whether it is
possible to stop spam. The most honest answer to this question is probably
not -- but you can significantly reduce it. Below are some clear and simple
tips to greatly reduce the amount of spam you get:
Many of us get thousands of spam messages a day. In fact,
Scam Busters gets many more than that. And one of our friends gets a
staggering 250,000 spam messages each day! Yikes...
So, it's not surprising that people need relief -- they want to do whatever
they can to stop spam.
There are two main types of spam, and they have different
effects on Internet users. Cancelable Usenet spam is a single message
sent to 20 or more Usenet newsgroups. (Through long experience, Usenet
users have found that any message posted to so many newsgroups is often
not relevant to most or all of them.) Usenet spam is aimed at "lurkers",
people who read newsgroups but rarely or never post and give their
address away. Usenet spam robs users of the utility of the newsgroups by
overwhelming them with a barrage of advertising or other irrelevant
posts. Furthermore, Usenet spam subverts the ability of system
administrators and owners to manage the topics they accept on their
systems.
Unfortunately, many of us now spend so much time filtering and deleting spam
that our biggest concern has become that we not lose messages we really
want.
Many double opt-in email newsletters are being incorrectly filtered, so
recipients who sign up never know they've been sent. And even personal
communication and one-on-one email is now regularly being filtered at the
server level.
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