Are You Losing Your Sanity to Spam Emails?

If you are, chances are you're not alone. Spam emails have been used as a cheap online marketing strategy since email and the internet has been popularized. And as long as unscrupulous individuals exist, the end to email spam is far, far into the future. Still, you can do something against spammers to keep your online sanity...

What is Spam?

Spam Emails are junk, unsolicited emails you received from unknown individuals. They are usually sent in bulk. If you don't have any spam filtering software installed, spam emails eats up your time just by filtering which emails are valid from your inbox. Spam emails also eat up your bandwidth. If you own a website, emails sent to your domain are part of the bandwidth you pay for web hosting. So unlike traditional snail mail where the sender pays for the postage, in email you actually pay for the spam message to be delivered to your inbox.

Spam emails are also a tool for phishing. This happen when spammers forge their email to look like it’s from someone else you know or from a reputable organization or institution. Such fraudulent emails target users to unknowingly respond with certain personal information such as username and passwords.

Why do people send spam emails?

The bottom line of spamming is to push their “products” using cost effective techniques. Individuals or even large companies engage in spamming because it’s cheap. It’s a numbers game. Imagine sending marketing ads of their products via email to several or even hundred thousands users, chances are people will bite into their ad. Even if only a few hundred people buy into their product, the returns exceed the cost of sending these bulk messages.

Harvesting your email address

You may be asking yourself, “How the heck did they get my email address?” There are a lot of ways to do that, but I’ll just list down the most obvious ones:

1. You subscribe to some questionable websites. These websites gathers emails address and then sells their email database to spammers.


2. You have your email address (yourname@yourdomain.com) posted in a web page somewhere. Some spammers deploy "Web Spiders" to crawl the web for the sole purpose of generating a list of email addresses. So if you have your email address posted in a website. You are vulnerable to get spammed.


3. Joining discussion Groups. Discussion groups are one place where spammers routinely join. And they join not because they are interested in the discussions or topics. If you think they are there just for the email addresses, you guessed right!

As I mentioned, there are lot of ways how a spammer can actually gather email addresses. Some can even generate a program to scan popular email domains such as Hotmail, MSN, Yahoo, and Gmail. The technique they employ is a pattern matching algorithm that matches initials plus surname with @maildomain.com. It’s a hit and miss technique but it yields addresses nonetheless.

Finding their way to your inbox

Since spamming has been identified as an unethical and illegal activity, spammers have gone some great length to send out their emails without actually revealing their real identities (because once they do this, its game over for them). Large companies are hiring third parties to do the spamming for them so that in case of complaints or law suits, the blame falls on the third party.

These third parties, to protect themselves, employ a cat and mouse game against anti-spam professionals. Some techniques done by spammers are:

1. Setting up spoof websites to send out spoof emails. Having a fake website let spammer gather emails from unsuspecting users. They can also be the launch pad in sending the spam emails. With little knowledge of PHP, a spammer can make use of the fake web host to forge emails and send it out to anyone in their list.


2. Hijacking other peoples’ computers and sending their spam emails from them (also know as zombie machines). Just like how a virus can propagate, a malicious program (malware) can be installed in any computer. Once it's there the malware takes care of sending the spam messages without the computer owner's knowledge.

Restoring your sanity

How to avoid spam emails

The best way you can do to avoid spam emails are:

1. Stop yourself from giving out your email addresses online. If you have to subscribe to an online newsletter or service, check out the credibility of the website first. Some decent websites have a privacy or anti-spam policy posted. If they have, read it.


2. This also applies when you subscribe to discussion groups such as Yahoo groups or Google groups. When joining such groups it really help if you personally know who the group owner or members are.


3. Avoid posting your email online. I have read somewhere that posting your email even in yourname[at]domain[dot]com format is not longer safe since some spammers have configured smart web spiders that can identify these format.


4. Scan your PC regularly. These days, you should scan your computer not only for viruses but also for malwares (malicious softwares). If you notice your computer to hang up or runs significantly slower when you are connected to the internet there may be a chance that your computer have turned into a “zombie” that sends spam. Scary huh?


5. It also helps if you can install some software which monitor your network or bandwidth activity. This way you can check if there is some unauthorized traffic coming in or out of your system.

I got spammed now what?

Once you're spammed, the probability of the spammer leaving your email alone is close to none. So if this is the case, you may want to consider getting an antispam software. There are a lot of anti-spam software ranging from freeware to licensed versions. If you are a website owner you may want to install SpamAssassin into your server. SpamAssassin, an open source software, is commonly distributed as an addon into your Cpanel by your Web Host.

If you use a private email then you may want to check out some available anti-spam software available in the net (i.e., SpamCop, Spam Killer, Spam Buster, etc).

If you use free email (i.e., Gmail, Yahoo, etc), they normally have some spam filter installed. I use Gmail and I am find their spam filter to be good enough.

The battle between spammers and the anti-spam industry is still ongoing and far from over. However, if you take some precautionary steps there's no reason to go insane about it.

 

I am receiving spam messages from my own Gmail account, what the...!?

I am a GMail user. GMail was the first to introduce inboxes with gigabytes of space thus nearly eliminating your need to delete mails just to monitor your mailbox space. I am also a fan of their spam filter which I find very good (at least for my needs).

You see, I make it a habit to once in a while visit my spam folder just to see if I am missing some emails which GMail inadvertently marked as spam. Imagine my surprise when I found an email message sent by---ME in the spam folder! This message contain some non-sense ads! I quickly checked my sent folders and there was no log or copy of any messages that I sent to myself. I doubled check and the message indeed indicate that it was my email address as the sender

So what's happening here..?

My first thought was that somebody logged in and sent an email using my account. This was not an unlikely scenario since I read from different blogs that your email account can be easily hijacked. You can read a detailed user experience from David Airey's blog.

I googled and searched the web to find possible explanations and solutions to my problem. However, I was not lucky enough to find any. I even made a post to google groups but I am still awaiting any response. I'll update this post as soon as I get any information.

A week of bad connection

It's been a week of on and off internet connection for me.

When I called my local ISP to let them know about it, they told me that there were some disconnections in their physical "cable lines" resulting in the intermittent internet connections.

It all started when contractors of a major telecommunication company started installing their lines in our area. I can't believe their gross negligence for their own safety and the consequences of their work procedures. You see, they will start climbing the telephone and/or electrical post (yeah, here in the Philippines, power and telecommunications are distributed via overhead power lines) through their ladder and then navigate their way from post to post by stepping on existing telephone and/or cable lines. No safety harness whatsoever!

So here I am again waiting on an FTP upload to connect so I can update a client...for a person highly dependent on internet connection...work...life seems to crawl! Arggg!

Blogged with Flock

Should we flock towards a new browser?

I came across a new browser.

Flock.

It's supposed to be a new browser geared towards social networking. Curious to see as to what it has to offer differently from my current fave Firefox, I downloaded (you can download it here) its 10MB file installer and installed it. In fact I am now writing this post using Flock.

My initial impression..looks promising..

The first feature I used is the "Open Blog Editor" in the tool bar...nice.

I'll test drive it more in a couple of days and post my experience from its use. Meanwhile, here's a quote of what Flock's website say about it:

Flock is built on the Mozilla Firefox open-source browser, so it has all the features you've come to expect in a high-quality web browser, like intuitive buttons and menus, personal customizability, reliable security, enhanced privacy protections, and automated updating. However, Flock is much more than that! The Flock Social Web Browser has been fully integrated with a wide range of social networking websites and popular blogging tools. So with Flock, you can now keep in touch and share text, links, pictures, video and more with friends, family and co-workers across the entire internet with unparalleled speed and seamless ease.

Until then...

Blogged with Flock

Does my business really need a website?

When asked about such question I always answer: of course! Even if your business is not into selling products or services online, having a web site will not hurt. What most people don't realize is that the internet is always available, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 4 weeks a month, get the picture?...it never sleeps!

Taking away online shopping services, let me list down a few features why your business will need one:

1. Provides 24 hours marketing tool. It can act as an online brochure, a catalog, a promotional media for an event or activity. Published it and its always there (Ok..that depends on the reliability of your web host provider). Plan and created properly, your website can reduce cost on your marketing budget. And as they say in business: a penny saved is a penny earned.
   
2. Widen the reach of your market. The internet knows no boundaries. Once its published, your web site can be seen and accessed around the world. Now, who wouldn't like that?
   
3. Promotes modern image of your company or business. A properly designed site can boost your corporate identity. In addition, placing information regarding your business' achievements, awards, or a link to a press release in your site can enhance your image as an industry leader in your field.
   
4. Enhances customer support. Aside from providing contact information, your site can place support information regarding a product or service. This can be an online manual, user guides, etc. It can contain a service bulletin board or forum where other users can interact and provide tips, reviews, etc.
   
5. It can gather contacts and build leads. Your site can also collect information about your visitors. You can ask for their email address or let them subscribe to an online newsletter where you can further market information regarding your products or services.

As you can see, having a web presence can surely benefit your business. However, having one doesn't necessarily translate to business success. You still have to work hard on many aspects to get it done. That's the way it is.

So does YOUR BUSINESS NEED a website?

A Brief History of Time...err, I mean the World Wide Web

I met a former student of mine two weeks ago. During our small chat we talked about what it was like back when I was in college…well, that is almost two decades ago. The most significant thing I remember back then was we actually use the university library to research and do our studies…the internet, at least in the Philippines—is still in its infancy.

I actually first encountered the use of the world wide web back in 1994, when the web browser being used is Mosaic. The web then was mostly text based, few graphics and most of them are low resolutions if any. Connection speed was predominantly done using modem which means turtle slow connections. Multimedia and video streaming was unheard of.

The world wide web was created by sometime in the early 1990s by Tim Berners-Lee and Robert Cailliau as an academic project to aid their physics research at CERN. Although during that time the internet already existed, the use of formatted text and hyperlinks on Web Pages made it more accessible and user friendly.

The Web was made more accessible to the public when the NSCA Mosaic hit the scene. It was created by Marc Andresssen who later founded Netscape Communications. Netscape then released Netscape Navigator and together with Microsoft Internet Explorer comprised one of the notable competition the software world has ever seen.

As it is the World Wide Web is a collection of web documents connected by what is called as hyperlinks. These documents are written in a special language called HTML (or Hyper Text Markup Language). However, as applications being used to share information in the internet becomes more complex, more and more publishing technologies becomes available: CSS, DHTML, JavaScript, XML, etc. These technologies enables web developers to create rich web documents and pages that enhance the surfing experience of users.

Today there are billions of pages comprising millions of websites available in the World Wide Web, and these numbers are still expected to increase every year--How's that for a science project?

Differentiating the World Wide Web and the Internet

In my field of work you’ll be amazed to know the number of people I have encountered that confused the internet with the World Wide Web. So I would like to post my share in an attempt to at least shed light to that confusion.


Internet

Plain and simple, the internet is the global connection (or network) of computers. It’s just a bunch of powerful computers located in different parts of the world connected by high speed networks. These computers either acts as servers or clients. This powerful computer commonly acts as Servers. While your computer (typically the one you use at home) is commonly called the client computer. Server computers “serve” to certain request of information from client computers. This is how the internet works—by passing around information from different computers.This global connection of computers we now call the INTERNET have many features:

1. E-mail or electronic mail.The exchange of written (well actually its digital) messages to different users around the world. Compared to snail mail (mail sent via the traditional postal service), e-mails are delivered almost instantly and is more cost effective.


2. File Sharing (File Transfer Protocol). FTP enables us to share digital or electronic file (these maybe software programs, videos, photos, etc.) to other users across the world via the UPLOAD or DOWNLOAD feature.


3. Discussion groups. This let users join in specific topical discussion who share common interest.


4. Published Information. These are published information linked with each other via hyperlinks. This is more commonly known as the World Wide Web (WWW) or simply the Web.

The creation of the World Wide Web has significantly boosted the use of the internet. Actually, it’s the web that makes the use of the internet more exciting! I’ll discuss more about the Web in my next post.