Simple ways to avoid spam

Since my brother complains about the spam he gets, I decided to write up these brief tips for dealing with the plague of our times, SPAM.

Don’t use email.

This is the classic solution I call DON’T RAISE YOUR ARM. It comes from that story about the patient who tells the doctor:

• Doctor, my arm hurts when I raise it. - Then don’t raise your arm, the doctor replies.

The truth is that if we used other email systems we wouldn’t have these problems, but history isn’t always progress, and the mail solution used on the internet today is built on a system that relied on trust among its users. When protocols like SMTP or POP were created, nobody gave much thought to the Internet being used commercially.

Be careful with your email address

It’s always good to use a secondary account for day-to-day business and keep a more private account that only our friends and people we trust know. The problem is that they can give your address away. Still, it’s a good idea to use a GMail or Yahoo account for your dealings on the internet. GMail has a very good anti-spam filter, and it’s one of the best options I know.

The truth is that spam hits us harder the more public our email address becomes. That’s why these tips can help:

1. Don’t use your main email on mailing lists or newsgroups.

2. Use a different email address on your website or blog, preferably a GMail account that lets you filter the mail. Do the same when you leave a comment on a blog, or sign up for a service you don’t trust.

3. Don’t forward chain letters; it’s a technique used to harvest email addresses.

4. If you’re going to send a message to many people, the best way is to send the email to yourself (yes, you can) and put the list of recipients in blind copy (BCC).

5. Content management systems (CMSs) and blogs now include blacklists. For example, my system has a list of comments and trackbacks that can be reviewed. It’s better to turn off comment notifications and get into the habit of visiting the blog to check the list of comments and trackbacks. It’s slower, and some of the people who write to you get impatient, but at least your inbox doesn’t fill up with spam.

Mail filters

There are many products and mail readers, such as Thunderbird, Outlook and others, that include filters and blacklists. You can also create mail rules, so that emails from people you know go to a special folder, and the rest to a folder you can ignore.

You can add a mail filter, such as SpamAssassin or others, but if you’re not very technical you’ll need to ask for help.

Accepting spam

Spam is a fact of life on the internet. Thanks to using Gmail and not spreading my address around, I’ve cut spam down considerably, and I don’t use any filter. My address is on this blog, on blogmemes, in many forums and lists, and the spam traffic is moderate, but I can ignore it thanks to the clients I use. I currently use Outlook 2003 and Thunderbird, my “public” account is on Gmail, and I never hand out my private addresses to any service.

I hope these simple tips are useful to you. Wikipedia has more tips.