If you are like most folks who work online, or, for that matter, like most anyone who uses email, you are engaged in a never-ending battle against SPAM.

Those unscrupulous degenerates who send SPAM by the millions to virtually every known, existing email address, as well as many that do not exist. Some of those sending SPAM use a dictionary attack method for sending their offers for supposed bust-enlarging creams, penile-widening gels, offers of millions for your help in opening an account and smuggling money out of Third World countries, offers to illegally buy and import to the U.S. (or other countries) medications from Canada, unsolicited offers for home mortgages and ultra-low and no-cost refinance options — even for people who do not even own a home!

Using email effectively

If your Internet Service Provider (ISP) offers more than one email address for your account, be sure to use the accounts wisely. If you subscribe to email discussion lists, use one account only for the lists. If your name is Sally, you could use an account such as, “SallyLists@ISPname.com” as your email discussion list email address.

Filtering your email

If you use an email client, such as [1] Outlook, [2] Outlook Express, [3] Windows Mail, [4] Apple Mail, [5] Evolution, [6] Mutt, [7] Mahogany, [8] Eudora, [9] Thunderbird, or [10] The Bat!, be sure to use folders, filters, White lists, and Black lists.

Using email folders and filters

The best advantage you can use in your personal fight against SPAM is to take the first step and create a folder and all appropriate filters for your email.

Let’s say you, as Sally, are subscribed to three email discussion lists. Create a folder in your email client for each list, then, to help automate things, create a filter in your email client so that when each message is received, it is automatically placed in the appropriate folder. This is a simple step. If a particular list uses a list identifier, such as, [List Name], as some lists do, then be sure to use the email address the list uses to send email, as well as the list identifier as the items for the filter to look at prior to moving the piece of email to the folder. Sometimes when someone tries to forge email to send as SPAM, they have the email address used to send the email, but they don’t have access to the actual server. They simply use the email address, making it look like it was sent from the list. Adding in as many possibly unique items that are used on every legitimate email from the particular lists will help weed out the SPAM from the legitimate emails.

Next, let’s say you check your work email from home. Create a folder for your work-related email, or several, depending on your needs. Perhaps you manage various projects, and each project has a specific email address assigned. In that case, create a folder for each project, such as Work (Wiki Project), Work (Widget Project), Work (VoIP Project), and Work (Office Stuff). Once you have the folders created, immediately create your filters, ensuring you use all available unique items, such as any domain keys your company may have, as well as the email address used to send the email.

Now comes the fun part. Friends and family.

Depending on the size of your family, as well as the volume of email you receive from each member, you may want to create a folder for each family member, or you may want to make one folder for your spouse, but use one folder for all other members of your family. This is where you will have to figure out what your needs are. You can always change this later by creating (or deleting) the appropriate folders and doing a simple drag-and-drop with the emails to move them to the appropriate folders should you need to later revise your family folder structure.

Once you have the family folders created, create filters for each person in your family and have the filter move all incoming email from each particular person to the folder of your choosing. Remember, some people may have more than one email address, and, especially the younger generation, some may have SMS addresses that you want to add to the filter, as well. Doing this now will make things much smoother later on.

What about all your friends?

Not a thing. Yet. But this is where we deal with them.

For friends, these are a particular bunch of people — some you like, some you “deal with” or “can stand,” and others are, well, your BFF (best friends forever).

Figure out the folders you will need to add for your friends who email you. Add any folders necessary. For “general friends,” perhaps you want one folder called “Friends,” and that catches most of the email. Perhaps there are two or three people who stand above the rest of your friends. Give them their own folders, especially if you and them have a high-volume of email exchanges.

Now, like all other scenarios, create filters for each friend, allowing the filters move all incoming email from each friend to the folder of your choosing. Remember, some of your friends may have more than one email address, and, some may have several email addresses, as well as an SMS address or two. Get everything added to the individual filters now, which will make life smoother later on, at least as far as email.

Using White lists and Black lists

Ah, yes, the proverbial white list and black list. The friend and foe list. The good and bad list. No matter what you call it, the email addresses listed in the white list will be allowed to send you email, with any subject or anything in the body of the email message, and it will get through. Even if it is SPAM, the message will get through because it came from the specific email address. This is where tweaking your filters will pay off.

Creating the black list

It’s time to create your black list. First, if you’ve set things up correctly, when you download your email from the mailserver, the only mail that should actually be in your INBOX is SPAM. Anything from work, from family, from your various email discussion lists, and from your friends should all be sorted into the various folders you created. If you look at your INBOX and see email from anyone you correspond with on a regular basis, create a new directory, naming it something appropriate for that “group” of people, and create a new filter.

Once you’ve tweaked your folders and filters to eliminate any legitimate email from ever landing in your INBOX, now comes the fun part: creating your black list.

Open each email, look for common features, such as how various keywords are spelled. Look at the headers of the email and find the mailserver and IP address used to send the email. Use the subject line itself, but only the important part, generally only a small part of the start, the middle, or the end of the subject line is needed.

Once you have the fingerprint for this particular piece of SPAM, create a new filter for it. Most every email client will offer “advanced” methods for filtering email. Be sure to check your email client and use those options, such as:

• specific words in message header
• This would be the IP address, the names of specific servers, domain keys, specific countries, and other information
• specific words in senders address
• Perhaps someone used “viagra.mail” — see if there is something specific. If not, block the email address anyway.
• specific words in the subject line
• Look for any specific words and copy them, don’t type them. Sometimes in SPAM messages, various alternates are used. Instead of potentially missing something, simply copy-and-paste the subject line, or, just the key part. Ignore any dates, codes, or extra spaces at the end of the subject line.
• which has an attachment
• You can create a filter that if the message contains an attachment and it is not from anyone in your email address book, that it should be deleted or moved to a folder — and you will need to create it now — called JUNK or SPAM.

Being selective in sharing your email address

Remember, just like any other personal information, treat your email address as if it were confidential. Why? Because it is. Just because you have an email address does not mean it is publicly-available, nor does it mean anyone else is entitled to have your email address, or even that they should have it. Be selective when sharing it, deciding who should have it, and, when you create a new email address, decide under what conditions someone should be given your email address.

Using the To, CC, and BCC lines effectively

When sending email to more than one person, do everyone a favor, especially if you one of those people who like to send jokes and other “chain letters” via email. Folks who send SPAM often are the friend of others — unknown to their friends — and when the SPAM-sending swine receive those forwarded emails containing, at times, hundreds, even just dozens, of email addresses, they copy the email addresses down into a “confirmed” email list and sell that list. These are “fresh” email addresses for them to SPAM.

Instead of putting everyone’s email address into the TO field, learn to use the BCC field. The CC field is for “carbon copy,” like back in the days of typewriters when people would use a sheet of carbon paper to make a copy of a typed letter or message for their own files. Even back in the days of typewriters, people used what was called BCC, which means Blind Carbon Copy, or, in simple terms, a carbon copy that was not disclosed.

When you send a message as a BCC, some email clients will force you to have a valid email address in the TO field. That’s simple enough to handle. Just enter your email address in the TO field. Your email address is already displayed in the FROM field. If you’re worried about someone sending you SPAM, then get a free disposable email address to use.

How SPAM gets past filters

The thing I most detest about SPAM are the tactics employed by those SPAM-sending degenerates. The intentional spellings to bypass SPAM filters, such as using a “0″ (zero) for an uppercase “O.” Using a “1″ for a lowercase “L.” Instead of spelling \/1@GRa, those sending SPAM using a variety of methods, such as \/ (a “V” created using the forward and back slash marks — “\” and “/” and using a 1, then using the letters AGRA. How about those who use the the “@” — the symbol for the word “at” — for the letter “A” — that’s another thing that irritates me.

When I create SPAM filters in my email clients, I use a variety of methods. I use every misspelling of the keywords using by the SPAM-sending slugs. I use the IP addresses to BAN all email coming from that server, and I even have entire countries blocked from sending email to me. Using the variety of tactics that I have tweaked over the years, I’ve managed to get the number of SPAM received on a daily basis reduced from over 2,500 SPAM per day down to around 1,300 SPAM received per day. Sure, it isn’t perfect, but I am making progress.

Anti-SPAM tools don’t provide 100% protection

In the past, yes, I’ve used tools that “bounce” SPAM messages back to those sending the SPAM, making it look like the server is saying the email account does not exist. Those tools didn’t help much, and sadly, I used each of the tools for a period of at least three months to test its effectiveness in my on-going battle against SPAM. I’ve used various blacklist tools. They, too, helped, but they didn’t eliminate the SPAM.

If you develop a perfect mouse trap, the mice will eventually learn from the mistakes of those who have gone before them and figure out how to get the prize. The same holds true for those who send SPAM. Statistics I’ve seen over the years say between one percent and four percent of everyone who receives SPAM responds to the SPAM, and around two to three percent of those receiving SPAM pay or engage in the offer proposed in the SPAM. It is from those poor, naive souls that the SPAM-sending swine make their money.

No one replies to SPAM. Do they?

If you don’t think there’s money to be had, consider that someone sending SPAM, through an army of zombie computers, sends only one million emails per day. Just two percent of that would be 20,000 people. But what about those low-volume folks who send only 500,000 SPAM messages per day? That would still be around 10,000 responses.

That’s a lot of people, but, even if those people do little more than buy a book for $1, look at the income that is being received from SPAM — something that cost the swine sending it nothing more than the cost of an Internet connection. Chances are, if they do send anything, it will probably be something they pilfered from the Internet or found free while surfing.

Footard.com makes disposable email accounts even easier!

A new site, [11] Footard.com, is currently in beta testing, has launched. It is a site that people like me may come to love in coming weeks, months, and years. It’s a site that allows you to quickly and easily create an email account, without any “real” registration issues. Simply choose a username, enter a password twice, agree to the [12] Terms of Service, and hit the Create button, and voila!, you have a new account.

Looking over Footard.com’s [13] Change Log is interesting, at least for those who may be a geek-at-heart, a geek by profession, or those who are just curious as to how and/or why things came about.

Footard.com is a site that I found just today, and from what I see, it’s fairly stable. I have one small challenge with the site, but it wasn’t anything major. No email was lost, and since it is clearly listed as “BETA,” no one can complain or give bad marks for things not working 100 percent at this time. Once it comes out of beta, though, is when people can begin griping, as that would be legitimate.

After the issue I had, I clicked the link to send Feedback, and, to my surprise, there was a quick and personal reply. The reply from the webmaster lead to another email exchange, showing the site’s owner is responsive.

How much is Footard.com going to charge?

According to the Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) at Footard.com, the site is free while in beta. Once released, though, the site’s owner hopes to fund operations through advertising programs, which, right now, is Google’s ad program strategically placed in four locations. The ads aren’t in the way, nor are they placed in a way that would “trick” you into clicking. The only thing I would change about the one set of text ads, just above the Delete, Reply, and Print buttons, would be to either move the ads up and add a line (a horizontal rule) below them, ensuring people know they are ads, and perhaps adding a colored background to make them stand out a little more. Past that, there’s no real complaints I have, even with a beta service.

There’s a note that the site’s owner is committed to the site, even if all costs associated with the site are not covered by the ad program. It says:

Hopefully advertising revenue will cover the costs of running Footard. If not, Footard will be funded out of my own pocket.

Footard.com handles both text and HTML messages, and can successfully handle sending and receiving PGP or GPG-encrypted messages without botching them.

So, what’s so great about Footard.com in the fight against SPAM? One thing: getting an account is simple. You create a username and password, and voila!, you’re in. When you’re done with the account, such as when those swine-like SPAM-sending slime balls discover or learn your new Footard.com email address, simply log into your account, go to the Account page, and click Delete Account on the menu. There’s a note in the Footard.com FAQ that “deleting your account is an irrevocable action. All emails and attachments related to the account will also be deleted.

From my testing, the server does what it should: it sends and receives email. There doesn’t appear to be any noticeable lag, nor any major problems. The only negative thing I found was that Gmail, Hotmail, and Yahoo all seem to be treating email from the Footard.com server as SPAM. During my testing, I used a small snip of text which I use for testing all email accounts I create. The text is very basic and without any potential buzzwords. Perhaps once people begin using Footard.com’s email server, and as enough people click the “Not SPAM” option in the various free email services, Footard.com will be added to a safe list, like other free email services, based on content.

Are you ready to continue your battle with SPAM, creating and deleting email accounts as needed? Or are you going to allow your real email INBOX continue to fill up with SPAM?

DISCLAIMER: I have no interest in Footard.com, nor have I been paid or compensated for any mention in this entry. This is a review of the site only, and is not a commercial, paid, or compensated message in any way.

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2 Comments To "Tactics and disposable email addresses to fight SPAM"

#1 Comment By mikek123 On Sunday, June 3, 2007 @ 1:05 am

#2 Comment By Dave J. (Scoop0901) On Sunday, June 3, 2007 @ 7:49 pm