Programming Internet Email

Recipient Approaches

Internet users are the civilian casualties of the spam war. (How’s that for a mixed metaphor?) Every Internet user receives some spam, so it is in our best interest to take steps to both avoid encouraging more and to eliminate what we do receive.

It is easier to avoid getting on spam lists than it is to get off of them. Although the means listed here are neither comprehensive nor foolproof, they are tried and true methods for avoiding spam:

• Avoid posting to Usenet newsgroups with your real email address.

• Avoid including your real email address in the body of Usenet news postings.

• Take the same actions with mailing lists.

• Avoid giving your email address to commercial web sites, who may sell their customer lists to clearinghouses for mass marketing.

• Occasionally post a (meaningful) message to the newsgroup news.admin.netabuse.email (NANAE) using your real address. Spammers avoid these anti-spam crusaders like the plague.

It is amazing how these simple actions can cut down on the amount of spam that you receive. The reverse is also true: failure to take these actions will cost you a temporary increase in the amount of spam that you receive. This increase is temporary only since some of the “best” collections of addresses attempt to keep them current, if only to sell new versions.

It should be noted that producers of bulk email lists do not collect addresses by watching and parsing general person-to-person mail. They collect addresses from public forums, such as mailing ...