The Jeffrey And Tracey Info Emporium

Unsolicited Commercial Email or Spam has grown at epidemic
proportions. It is rapidly becoming the number one problem that
Information Technology departments deal with on a day-to-day
basis, surpassing computer viruses. The volume and percentage of
unwanted email received in business and personal email inboxes
is starting to overwhelm and drown out legitimate email.

Although the vast majority of this bulk email is being
perpetrated by individual spammers and a few large bulk mailers
pushing pornography, gambling, get rich schemes, ‘medicinal
cures’ and bootleg software, real businesses have been caught in
the web also by committing several errors. The three ways a
legitimate business falls into the Spam mode are: 1. Legal
non-Compliance, 2. Violating Trust, and 3. Lack of Value.

Legal non-Compliance

Through the end of 2003 it was very difficult to comply with
Spam laws as twenty six states had passed their own laws dealing
either directly with the process of sending unsolicited
commercial email or the format requirements of bulk email. With
the passage of the Federal law - “Controlling the Assault of
Non-Solicited Pornography and Marketing Act of 2003″ or better
known as the CAN-SPAM Act of 2003, it has become a lot easier to
understand and apply the rules. Real businesses should have no
problem complying with all aspects of the law and those that
don’t will find themselves in legal jeopardy for significant
penalties.

The process components of the law won’t be an issue for real
businesses, they don’t fake the reply address, they don’t hijack
someone else’s mail server nor do they contain falsified routing
information. Where they are likely to fail are in three specific
areas.

1) Neglecting to include a valid physical address in the body of
the email.

2) Not having a functional Internet-based opt-out mechanism,
which must be active for a minimum of 30 days after the email
has been sent.

3) Failing to include clear and conspicuous identification that
the message is an advertisement or solicitation. Most State laws
approached this similar provision by requiring the use of the
letters ADV: in the beginning of the subject line. The Federal
doesn’t specify how this is to be accomplished; thereby, leaving
it open to a wide range of interpretation.

There are several additional areas that are process related that
may trip up the sender unintentionally.

1) The sender rents or purchasing a defective email list, for
example one that has individuals that have already opted-out of
email communications.

2) They use a ‘tricky’ subject line to entice recipients to open
the message. Subject lines that stretch the truth could be
identified as misleading the purpose of the email and therefore
be a violation.

3) Agents or related 3rd parties that have business relationship
with the firm send out Spam. This could put the company in
jeopardy if it can be proven that they were aware of the related
company’s activities.

Although the Federal law isn’t perfect one significant
advantage it does offer to real businesses is that there is now
only one place they need to go to check the rules before a
company embarks onto an email marketing program.

Violating Trust

Trust is one of the major stumbling blocks keeping the publics’
enthusiasm for the Internet in check. And when it comes to
providing their email address that is in the eye of the storm.
The overwhelming concern people have about providing a company
their email address is that it will be shared, loaned, rented,
sold or carelessly unprotected. Sharing lists internally between
product lines, departments, or divisions and externally with
‘business partners’ stretches the permission basis originally
given by the subscriber. When opt-in lists developed at one
website are resold to list brokers, real businesses that rent
these lists automatically become spammers because recipients are
typically applying this litmus test to commercial email they
receive: “Email marketing is for product/service information
I’ve specifically requested, Spam is sent without asking for it”.

Businesses embarking down the eMarketing path often have
in-house databases that include email addresses of suspects,
prospects, and clients. The conversion of these lists, developed
on a relationship basis, to a formal subscriber list treads a
fine line and should be considered very carefully before
assuming that permission has been granted.

Lack of Value

Every time you send email to your list members, you will be
judged, and in some cases, it may appear to have been done
unfairly. In today’s environment subscribers are now becoming
annoyed at a variety of shortcomings, such as messages about
products they seldom buy, messages that serve the sender more
than the recipient, unsubscribe processes that don’t work, ‘hard
sell’ messages or even messages in formats that can’t be
properly displayed in the recipient’s mail program.

The plain simple truth is that even in a permission email
environment, recipients are now applying their own tests for
Spam whether they opted in or not. These are natural human
reactions to the mailings they receive - it can be as
straightforward as “Email marketing is email I like, Spam is
email I don’t like.”

How to Fix

Real businesses need to insure that they aren’t jeopardizing
their brand name by meeting or exceeding the best practices for
email marketing. Auditing the list, evaluating your content and
insuring proper conformance with the documentation process in
the permission mailing process are the key components to a
successful campaign.

One of the hottest discussion topics going around the web these
days is Spam. Spam is different things to different people, but
basically it is sending email advertisements to anyone who did
not request them or give permission to send them.

I do not consider an email from an acquaintance telling me
something they think might interest me- spam. I do not consider
people telling me about their business and asking for
advice-spam. I do not consider advertisements from companies I
have asked about-spam. I do not consider an invitation from a
publisher to join their opt-in list-spam. However, these
invitations should not be sent out in mass mailings.

There are, however, many things that I do consider to be spam.
Unfortunately, when I first started on the Internet, I was
guilty of spam once or twice. It does not necessarily make me a
bad person, just an uninformed one. Now that I know what is
considered to be spam and what is not, I would never in any way,
shape or form become a Spam Artist!

These are some things to avoid doing:

* Sending your ad to any email you come across - SPAM! Do NOT
send your ad to anyone unless they have asked for information,
or if they have joined your opt-in list.

* Joining every discussion and announcement list you can find
and sending your ad every few hours - SPAM! When you join these
email lists, they will send you an email with their guidelines
for posting. Please read and follow these guidelines carefully.

* Subscribing to an ezine and then replying to the ezine with
your ad - SPAM! This is one way to get yourself removed from a
lot of good lists. If you receive an ezine, do not reply with
one of your ads.

* Buying email address lists and blasting your ad-SPAM! Most of
the people on these lists probably do not even know they are on
them. Therefore, you do not have their permission to send your
ads.

* Adding people to your opt-in list without their permission -
SPAM! Inviting people to join your list is one thing, but adding
them without permission is a definite NO-NO.

* Visit every board you can, leave an ad and never come back -
SPAM! Message boards have specific rules for posting and are
usually for people to discuss and learn from each other, not for
posting ads.

If you are unsure as to whether something is spam or not, visit
some boards and ask other more experienced netpreneurs. It is
better to be sure than to be accused of spam. Join some
discussion lists also, to learn more about spam and what you
should or should not do.

Message Boards:

http://www.free-publicity.com/cgi-bin alk.cgi
http://www.bizweb2000.com/wwwboard/
http://start-smartz.com/cgi-bin/index.cgi#post

Discussion Groups:

mailto:pubsonly-subscribe@topica.com
mailto:Newbies911-subscribe@topica.com
mailto:epub-subscribe@yahoogroups.com

Visit these sites for more information on what spam is, what to
do about it and how to avoid it:

http://w3.one.net/~banks/spam.htm
http://www.arachnoid.com/lutusp/antispam.html
http://www.spamfree.org/ http://stopspam.sparklist.com/

Be cautious of the way you conduct your business. Some people
are tolerant of spam (if you are not a repeat or offensive
spammer) and will just hit the delete button, but some will
report anything they think is spam.

Do some research on spam and how not to become a Spam Artist!

Hands down, email is the most widely used and loved computer
application brought to life by the Internet.

According to the publication ‘Messaging Today’ (2000 Electronic
Mailbox Report - Feb. 21, 2001), “Email is the most successful
communications technology since the television, and in a few
years will even surpass that. There are currently more than 891
million email accounts in use Worldwide and 440 million in the
U.S. alone - with an average of more than 4 email accounts per
person.”

While more than 200 million of us use and enjoy email, there are
a few thousand people abusing the system and damaging the
communication potential of email for the rest of us.

SP^AMMERS ARE THE ENEMY OF US ALL!

The most common forms of email abuse are as follows:

- Using email harves^ters (software which gathers email
addresses from the Internet for the purpose of sending sp^am
messages). - Selling the addresses gathered from an actual
opt-in email list to someone who the recipient did not give
contact permission to personally. - Buying the Mil^lions CD’s
and then requiring people to opt-out of email, rather than to
opt-in to the email. - Providing remove addresses that do not
work.

Generally, the persons using these sp^am techniques are morons
who are simply too lazy to learn how to develop an honest online
business or too impatient to build a business that will last a
lifetime. Let us not forget that “moron” is the key word here
since a sp^ammers business will not generate enough income to
justify the cost of doing business the outlaw way.

LAZY LIVES ON BOTH SIDES OF THE STREET!

Sp^ammers sp^am because they are too lazy to build an online
business the old-fashioned way — with honesty and integrity.

As a result of the sp^ammers obnoxious laziness, the public has
been confronted with the growing nuisance of hundreds of sp^am
messages in their email boxes on a daily basis! I have filtered
more than 100 pieces per day to my trash bin, and I still
receive another 200 plus messages per day that I have not set up
filters for yet.

While I will admit that sp^ammers are truly annoying, I must
confess that the general public has created new problems for all
of us! In the war against sp^am, email account holders
constantly suggest that their ISP’s must deal with the sp^am
issue for them.

ISP’S RESPOND

By putting the responsibility of controlling sp^am on the
shoulders of ISP’s, rather than hitting the delete key
ourselves, we have opened a whole new can of worms.

In truth, ISP’s cannot do too much to stem the tide of sp^am.
Yet, with so many angry customers, ISP’s felt a strong need to
find some kind of solution to the problem.

ISP’s had one of two options:

- RBL (Realtime Blackhole List) http://mail-abuse.org/rbl/ -
Installing Email Filters

Neither is a perfect solution to the sp^am problem… In fact,
both are actually very poor solutions to the sp^am problem!

HOW SP^AM FILTERS WORK

To understand the quandary created by the use of filters in the
war against sp^am, we must first understand how sp^am filters
work.

It is important to understand that filters are actually software
applications.

Software is not intuitive!

While a few software applications may seem intuitive, the
illusion exists only because the mind of the programmer was able
to foresee your desires for the use of the software.

Filtering software exists only as a set of rules to determine
the likelihood of a message being sp^am. Here is an outline of
some of the basic rules that sp^am filtering software follows:

1. If the origination email server is different from the email
server of the sender’s default email address, then it is likely
sp^am. 2. If the email is delivered to more than 25 people, it
is likely sp^am. 3. If the email originates from a specific
server, then it is likely sp^am. (This is the only rule that the
RBL follows.) 4. If the email originates from a specific country
TLD (top-level domain), then it is likely sp^am. 5. If certain
words appear in the Subject or Email Body, then it is likely
sp^am. (This is where the real problems begin!)

THE PANDORA’S BOX OF THE SP^AM WARS

ISP’s who choose the filter option will either install a filter
on incoming email only, outgoing email only or a combination of
both.

With the fifth basic rule in the sp^am filtering software that
most ISP’s use, each ISP has a list of “sp^am words” that the
software scans for.

A few of the simpler, more obvious “sp^am words” follow:

- H^GH - D^VD - C^asino - G^ambling - P^orn - M^illion -
B^illion - V^iagra

The first time I had experienced the ugly filter problem was
with my first ezine. My ezine was a computer support publication
and upon the introduction of a major v^irus, I tried to send
instructions to my list on how to identify the v^irus and to
repair its damage. Unfortunately, my list server had blocked all
messages that mentioned the name of the virus. (Never mind that
the actual payload email never mentioned the given name for the
v^irus!)

My second experience was in trying to send an article to a
friend because I felt the content of the article was important
for my friend to have. After seven attempts, I finally realized
what the blocked “sp^am word” was. If you can believe it, the
blocked word was Ama^zon.com !!!

Within the last 30 days, I had two outgoing emails blocked by my
own ISP.

The first was being delivered to a client of mine to inform them
that I had received their p^ayment. The subject of the email was
“P^ayment R^eceived” (a common subject of sp^am messages) !!!

The second email hinged on an article I tried to deliver for
another client. The dreaded “sp^am word” was “g^old” !!! We had
to change the name of the article to get the article past my own
ISP’s filters.

THE PROBLEM IN A NUTSHELL

Richard Lowe, the owner of http://www.Internet-Tips.net says,
“The Internet is communication. It’s as simple as that.”

The problem with ISP filtering is that the ISP cannot know what
we want to read and what we do not want to read. A single ISP
has clients who use the Internet for business, health, family,
research or any of a dozen different purposes.

The person who wants to use the Internet for family
communications usually has no interest in business topics. And
the online business person may have no interest in family tree
software or health products.

Yet, the ISP has no choice but to block all kinds of “sp^am
words” for the full range of communication subjects.

As a result, the family person may not see the information
concerning family tree software or other items regarding home
life, and the business person may not be able to receive
information vital to the operation of their business.

THE SCOPE OF THIS PROBLEM

We email junkies tend to subscribe to ezines covering a wide
range of personal preferences. Unfortunately, a large number of
ezines are being blocked by ISP’s because ezines tend to meet at
least two of the criteria built into most sp^am filters (#1, #2
and sometimes #5).

Once again, the fifth basic rule is the dangerous one.

Sp^ammers are using more and more common words in their mailings
that the ISP’s are beginning to block.

I can almost guarantee that if your own ISP was to turn off
their sp^am filters for a month, you would get to see for the
first time a large number of ezines that you subscribed to way
back when, but have never seen before.

Sure, you would see a large increase in the sp^am coming into
your email box, but you would also see all of the mail that you
want to receive that you have not been receiving.

WHERE SHOULD WE GO FROM HERE?

If we rely upon our ISP’s to do the filtering for us, then we
are committing ourselves to receive only the information that
our ISP’s filters are able to let us receive. It is as simple as
that.

It is like the news pundits on television say about the war on
terrorism, “We have a choice between freedom and security. The
more of one we have, the less of the other we will have.”

We have two choices:

1. We turn back the tide of ISP controlled communication and
accept the responsibility of setting up our own filters to
eliminate the garbage in our inbox. 2. Or, we continue to rely
upon our ISP’s to filter the sp^am by adding new words to their
“sp^am word” lists, eliminating all personal control from our
personal communications.

TURNING BACK THE TIDE WILL REQUIRE SOME CONCERTED EFFORTS

Our ISP’s have been asked for so long to be our “Big Brother” to
stem the tide of sp^am. ISP’s have come to the point of
believing that we are children who need to be protected from the
“morons” who are destroying this incredible communications tool.

To turn back this tide, we must be ready and willing to accept
the personal responsibility of controlling our own
communications.

First, we must learn to use the tools included in our email
software that permit us to set up our own filters. Once we have
the basic understanding of how to set up our own email filters,
we must progress to step two.

In step two, we must contact our ISP and let them know that we
want to be responsible for ourselves. Our ISP must understand
that we DO NOT want them to run sp^am filters on their email
servers. We must declare that we do not them to baby-sit our
communications for us. We must emphasize that we want to decide
for ourselves what we want to read and what we do not want to
read! We must emphasize that we would rather use our delete
keys, than to rely upon their filters to not block any of our
important communications.

You and I alone will not be able to convince our ISP’s to ditch
the policy of acting as our “Online Big Brother”. But, when
enough of us have banded together and made our demands for open
communications clear, ISP’s will have to take notice and turn
off their filters for fear of losing their customer base.

If we permit ISP controlled filters to continue to grow
unabated, the filters will eventually eliminate the real value
of email as a communications tool.

We must take a stand to reverse the focus of the War Against
Sp^am! We must take a stand now to reverse the tide, or we risk
the very real death of email communication and the Internet!

For more information about the “War Against Sp^am”, visit the
following links:

http://PathTrax.com/x.pl/BP121,spam_war_crossfire
http://PathTrax.com/x.pl/BP121,Will_Email_Kill_Email

You must be one of them experiencing a lot of unwanted emails
flooding into your mail box every day. It is annoying, and a
“daily” problem for many.

How do the spammers find your email? They can find your email
address either in the text of a web page or in a mailto link.
The spammers enjoy harvesting the emails and ultimately those
emails are spammed with junk mails.

I came to know about some simple methods to protect our email
IDs from spammers, which I hope may be of some help to you too.

1. While leaving your email address on the web page or on a text
message or on a discussion board, write like this - username @
domainname. com (Please note the space in between). Then during
the harvesting process it won’t work easily.

2. Write your email like this - username (at the) domainname.com
or net, or edu, whatever it may be.

3. Use a web form. Those who genuinely want to contact you will
fill the form with their details and get in touch with you. So
you know who is contacting you.

4. Never reply to a spam email. Many advise that replying to a
spam email confirms your email address to the spammer.

5. While leaving your email address for filling up a form to get
more information please check with their privacy policy, to
ensure that they won’t misuse your email for any other purpose,
other than the one you’ve requested.

6. Make use of your email provider’s filtering facility to
reduce spam.