Fight Spam!
By Lincoln D. Stein
Every day for three months, when I opened my electronic in-box, I was greeted by the same piece of junk mail from Bull's Eye Marketing (see
Example 1). The letter went on to tell me how a wonderful new technology called "spidering" will hop from Web site to Web site, scanning for email addresses and collecting them into a targeted mailing list. Once the mailing list is assembled, I too, can become a junk-mail sender and blitz thousands of recipients with unwelcome email solicitations.
This type of mail is known as "spam" and it burns me up. The nightly Bull's Eye message is only the tip of the iceberg. Because my email address can be found on a lot of Web pages and newsgroup postings, I get a lot of spam. Every day I receive between five and ten pieces ranging from tips on how to make my Web site more popular, to offers for golfing magazines (I don't golf), to offers of cheap computer equipment, to invitations to visit porn sites. Because I have several email addresses, many of these letters arrive in duplicate and triplicate.
I guess I'm lucky. I've heard of people who've had to abandon their email addresses in order to be rid of the flood of junk mail, and who now deliberately mangle the return addresses on their newsgroup postings to avoid being netted by the address scanners.
In this column I'll discuss what spam is, why it's bad, and what you can do about it.
