There’s no magic bullet
to stop spam, but a few
simple steps can reduce it

Unlike Monty Python’s Vikings, we don’t like spam — at least not the e-mail variety. Customers beg us for some kind of relief from the flood of unsolicited e-mail that fills their mailboxes every day. These messages insult our intelligence and our sensibilities. Unfortunately, there is no magic bullet.

If your e-mail address is on a Web site anywhere — your business, your church, your school or your Little League roster — you will get spam. Spammers search Web sites in much the same way search engines like Google and MSN do. Spammers will capture your e-mail address and immediately start using it and/or selling it.

If you have an e-mail address on a major service like AOL or MSN, spammers send messages out to every permutation and combination of user names for that service. If it doesn’t come back as undeliverable, they know they have a good address and immediately start using it and/or selling it. (Have you noticed e-mails with blank subject lines and no sender information in your mailbox? Tag — you’re it!)

Larger corporations spend a great deal of money on server-based solutions that are supposed to filter out spam before it arrives in a user’s mailbox. Major ISPs (AOL, Comcast, MSN, Verizon, etc.) also try to block spam before it gets to the consumer.

The problem is that no software is perfect when it comes to detecting spam. In 2005, Verizon was hit with a class-action lawsuit because it was too aggressive in filtering spam, blocking almost anything that came from Europe or China.

Being on the receiving end of spam isn’t necessarily the worst thing that can happen to you, though. If you have your own corporate or personal domain name, you may suddenly find that your domain has been blacklisted by certain ISPs (a blacklist is a list of domains that are actively blocked as known spammers). Once you are blacklisted, you are likely to find a flood of bounced messages from servers that have blacklisted you or from nonexistent e-mail addresses. This can bring your network to its knees.

How on earth did this happen? Often, spammers use an unsecured mail server to send their messages. This isn’t as difficult as it sounds. If your mail server does not require authentication (usually your e-mail username and password), then all a spammer has to do is enter your outgoing mail server name and your business now has a new sideline — spam.

Many ISPs and IT departments now require authentication on their servers. But you are not off the hook quite yet. Spammers can “spoof” your domain name. Spoofing is essentially using some fictitious e-mail address on your domain as a return address for a torrent of spam. There is little you can do to protect yourself from this underhanded trick.

There are literally thousands of spam-fighting solutions available today. Just Google “spam-fighting software” and you’ll see what we mean. We could write half a dozen columns on ways to fight spam. Since we don’t have the room to do that, here are a couple of tips that can help reduce your spam:

• First, use response forms on your company Web site rather than providing actual e-mail addresses. Ask your Web designer about these. If he or she doesn’t know what these are, start looking for a new Webmaster.
• Second, if you must post an e-mail address, use an alias or a “disposable” address. Most mail systems will allow you to create an alias, which is essentially a temporary address that forwards e-mail to your real address. When you’re done with that address, or when the spam gets to be too much, you delete it and create a new one.

Surprisingly, using a legitimate e-mail address on shopping or product registration sites generates little or no spam for us.

To dig deeper on this topic, visit our Weblog at www.twogeeksblog.com.

Sven Mogelgaard is the owner of Mill Creek-based Byte Slaves Inc. and can be reached by calling 425-482-9529. Will Rutherford is the owner of Bothell-based Computer Concepts and can be reached by calling 425-481-3666.