How Do I Identify an Email as Spam?

Almost everyone with an email account has experienced spam in one form or another. In a general sense, you may consider any unsolicited email message as possible spam. However, you may actually wish to receive certain emails without you specifically requesting them, so here are some tips to help you sift through your inbox and pick out the spam from the genuine.Many spam emails are incredibly easy to spot, such titles as “LOSE 100 POUNDS IN 5 DAYS,” and “EARN UP TO $500,000 WITHOUT LEAVING YOUR HOME” are sure giveaways. Generally, any email containing an “incredible offer”, get rich quick scheme, adult-related website, or “amazing new product” that you did not request can quickly be classified as spam.

However a more advanced spammer can use some tricks to disguise their emails. Often spammers will make the email look as if its coming from somewhere that its not (ie. an email from bill.gates@microsoft.com probably isn’t going to actually be from Mr. Gates). Since anyone can specify anything they want in the “From:” line of an email, it is easy to mask spam emails with dummy return addresses.

Ten Ways to Avoid Spam

1.Maintain at least two email addresses. You should use your private address only for personal correspondence. The public address should be the one you use to register on public forums, in chat rooms, to subscribe to mailing lists etc.

2.Never publish your private address on publicly accessible resources.

3.Your private address should be difficult to spoof. Spammers use combinations of obvious names, words and numbers to build possible addresses. Your private address should not simply be your first and last name. Be creative and personalize your email address.

4.If you have to publish your private address electronically, mask it to avoid having it harvested by spammers. Joe.Smith@yahoo.com is easy to harvest, as is Joe.Smith at yahoo.com. Try writing Joe-dot-Smith-at-yahoo-dot-com instead. If you need to publish your private address on a web-site, do this as a graphics file rather than as a link.

Types of Spam (4)

Today spam is a household word, since 70-80% of all email traffic is spam. Although spam written in English is the most common, it comes in all languages including Chinese, Korean and other Asian languages. In most cases spam is advertising, and experience shows that spammers have targeted specific goods and services to promote. Some goods are chosen because a computer user is likely to be interested, but most are grey or black market goods. In other words, spam is usually illegal not only because of the means used to advertise the goods, but also because the goods and services being offered are illegal in themselves.

Other mass mailings are outright fraud, such as the notorious 419 messages which offer the recipients a share of funds which allegedly cannot be accessed by the sender for political reasons, in return for the recipient’s help in legalizing these funds. The recipient is asked to provide bank account details; of course, if the recipient provides these details, the bank account will be emptied without their consent. This type of spam is usually called a ’scam’.

The commonest types of spam

Spam worldwide tends to advertise a certain range of goods and services irrespective of language and geography. Additionally, spam reflects seasonal changes, with advertisements for Christmas items and car heaters being replaced by air conditioner advertising in summer.

The Evolution of Spam (3)

In the beginning

Spam (unsolicited bulk advertising via email) made its first appearance in the mid 1990s, i.e. as soon as enough people were using email to make this a cost-effective form of advertising. By 1997, spam was regarded as being a problem, and the first Real-Time Black List (RBL) appeared in the same year.

Spammer techniques have evolved in response to the appearance of more and better filters. As soon as security firms develop effective filters, spammers change their tactics to avoid the new spam blockers. And this leads to a vicious circle, with spammers re-investing profits into developing new techniques to evade new spam filters. The situation is spiralling out of control.

The development of spammer techniques

Direct mailing

Initially, spam was sent directly to users. In fact, spammers didn’t even need to disguise the sender information. This early spam was easy enough to block: if you black listed specific sender or IP addresses, you were safe. In response, spammers began spoofing sender addresses and forging other technical information.