Combatting Spam: Tips and Techniques to Stop Unwanted Messages

2. Introduction Email Spam IM Spam Text Spam Blog Spamming Spam Blogs Spam in Society

3. Email Spam Google it!

4. Avoiding Spam: Use your ISP email address for only your closely trusted acquaintances and friends, and web-based email accounts for everyone else. Use programs such as Norton Antispam and McAfee SpamKiller to protect your email inbox. Spam can be reported to ISP’s, who will help stop the problem. Use different email accounts for different purposes, e.g. business email, personal email, website accounts, blogging. Home

5. Expert: Instant Messaging (IM) spam is when an unknown user of an IM service sends messages to you promoting their product. Newbie: How can I stop it? Expert: IM spam can be combated on most messaging services by using an ‘Ignore anyone who is not in my contacts’ function under a Preferences tab. Home

6. Text spam Google it!

7. It is easy to stop m-spam. There is a setup area in most mobile phones where you can set your phone to “only receive messages from contacts.” Messages from contacts only: on Home

8. Blog Spamming is the automatic posting of messages on blogs, wiki’s, guestbooks and other internet forums (not including instant messaging). Some times it is the website owner who is posting these messages, to increase their placing in search engines and thus get more site traffic. Other times the blog spam is the posting of a website address, in an attempt by other website owners to get more traffic on their website. More Spam Blogs

9. Blog spamming can be fought in many ways. For example, on some websites a user account is needed for messages to be posted. Some websites have the text input box, where a user must input the letters shown in an image. Computers cannot read this image. Therefore the only spam that can be submitted on these websites is spam submitted by humans, which cuts down on the overall level of spam. Home

10. Spam Blogs (also known as splogs) are websites created for the purpose of promoting affiliated websites. It differs from blog spam in that the websites with blog spam are made by innocent bystanders, while Spam Blogs are made by spammers. One expert believes that for every four innocent blogs, there is one spam blog. More Blog Spamming

11. There are presently no effective countermeasures to splogs. Home

12. Home The effects of spam on society The effects of society on spam

13. People spam because they either have a commercial need to promote their product using a form of advertising; or to spread destructive programs such as viruses and malware. The first reason is the most widespread. Society is forcing spam to become ‘smarter’ - to get through sophisticated spam filters such as Norton Antispam. Society is also making spam widespread, as many more people own PC’s than in the past and are therefore prone to e-mail spam. Back

14. Most people are opposed to spam because of spam's basic nature. Some spam contains objectionable material, such as pornography. Most everyday users are sick of having to use their email program to download hundreds of spam emails. Some are pro-spam, such as media theorist Vincent Maher, who has said “It (spam) provides a blanket of protection against the most crystalline forms of surveillance and control in the technicist theatre of the Internet.” However, the anti-spam group is the vast majority. Back

15. Email spam is the sending of bulk email that wasn’t asked for. It is very common, as all the sender needs to make it is a computer, email addresses and a broadband internet connection. This type of spam is most commonly sent by businesses, as advertising. This is illegal in most of the world, but ‘email marketing’, the sending of emails to potential customers, is legal. Email spam can contain viruses which force a computer to send spam emails. More

16. M-spam is the sending of unwanted messages to cellphones. A common form of m-spam is a text message sent to a mobile. It requests that a number be rung. When the mobile phone connects with the telephone it is charged at a steep rate for the time it spends connected to the telephone. Texts: 20 Unread More