It might not be fun and it might not be fair, but dealing with spam is going to be up to you.
The Controlling the Assault of Non-Solicited Pornography and Marketing Act of 2003, unofficially known as CAN-SPAM has been in effect since January 1 and the amount of spam in our email boxes has actually increased.
97 percent of the folks prosecuted last week by big emailers are actually unidentified John Does.
Automatic spam-blocking software is likely to block as much as 20 percent of the email you actually want.
The result, my friend, is that you're going to have to take some responsibility for dealing with your own spam problem. There are two parts to this: keeping your email address off the spammer's lists and dealing with the flood of spam coming into your email box.
There are three things you can do to stay off the spammer's lists. Ironically, the first one is not to ask to be removed from their lists. Click on that "Remove Me" link and you're likely to be telling a spammer that he's reached a valid email address.
Be careful what you check in those online forms that you fill out when you join a Web site or sign up for a newsletter. Many of them have a box labeled something like "I'd like to receive interesting offers from your company and its marketing partners."
Don't check that box. If it's automatically checked, uncheck it. It will save you lots of grief.
You can also use different email addresses for each subscription or membership. They might be accounts with a free email service or you may be able to set up multiple email addresses with your prime email service.
If you use addresses like subscription1@myaddress.com and subscription2@myaddress.com for different accounts, you can reap a couple of benefits. First, your email for each subscription can go to its own email box, making the service easier to manage.
But wait, there's more. If you start getting spammed using the email address subscription1@myaddress.com you can cancel that subscription right away. Then you can use filters or spam blocking software to screen out any mail coming to the address.
That leads us into the world of managing the flood of email that fills your box. Filters are the tool that helps you do that. Some filters are part of your basic email program. Others are part of spam blocking software.
Filters work like an assistant that sorts your email into piles. A filter can take that email from subscription1@myaddress.com and put it in a separate folder so you can review all of it at one time. If the address starts to be used by spammers, your trusty filter can put all mail to that address right in the trash.
Email that goes directly into the trash is on what we call the Black List. Mail from known spam addresses goes there. So does mail using words that spammers use or to your email addresses that have been captured by spammers.
Sounds good, right? It is. But there's a danger. You don't want to put things you want to read in the trash, do you? I didn't think so. And that's why dealing with email spam is a lot like triage.
The Black List is only one of your main piles of email. For most of us the Black List and our Trash Bin are one and the same. Use your filters to send email you're sure you don't want to read right to the trash.
You should also have a White List. That's filters that take mail you know that you want to read and put it where you want it. That would be mail from your family, clients, some folks you do business with.
Alas, though, the power of filters is limited and that's why you need another list or pile for your email. I call mine the Review List.
Your filters should put all the "maybe I want to look at this" email in one place so you can review it to see if it goes in the trash or someplace else. Then it's up to you to review all the emails that are there and decide.
That's a lot like dealing with your daily load of physical mail. You look at the emails one at a time and either trash them or put them someplace for you to deal with later. It's a labor intensive process and one that only a human, that's you, can do.
Here's the bottom line on spam today. The laws that are out there won't help you much. The technology can help a little. You've got to do a lot of the work yourself.
Check out Wally's Monday Memo: Spam, Spam, Go Away.
15 March 2004
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