How can you stop spam

By Christina Okoli

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What is email spam

Spam is the common term for the sending of unsolicited emails to one or more email addresses by a company or individual. Like electronic junk mail, most spam messages are unwanted and go unread by the recipient. Few Internet users have been spared the drudgery of having to sieve through unsolicited commercial emails (UCE) or spam as they are more widely known.

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Who sends spam and who receives it

According to a report published last week by the European Commission, 268 billion unsolicited commercial emails were sent to email addresses last year. Because the cost of sending these emails falls on the recipient or the recipient’s Internet service provider, commercial companies, mainly pornography websites, get-rich-quick schemers and a range of other possibly fraudulent organisations can market their services via email without having to pay a penny. The cheap nature of spam, means that such companies can and will send their marketing material to any email address they can get their hands on.

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How do these companies get people’s email addresses

There is a flourishing trade in email addresses, and many companies are prepared to sell personal information, including the email addresses of their customers, to spamming companies without the knowledge or consent of the user. Frits Bolkestein of the EU’s Internet Market Commission said, 'Consumer information gleamed from individual web transactions/consultations can be sold for large sums of money, and yet many individual subscribers are unaware of the scale and implications of these developments.'

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Is it illegal to send spam

At present there is no legislation to prevent companies from sending out spam. However, the EU’s report on unsolicited commercial emails (UCE) found that spamming is currently costing Internet users or their ISPs more than E10 billion every year. Not only do users find unwanted email annoying and a violation of their privacy, but the process of circulating UCEs is slowing down many ISP servers and eating-up a lot of network bandwidth.

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So, how can ISPs stop companies from spamming their users

Many ISPs and free email providers, including MSN.com and Hotmail, have set-up message filters, which can automatically block in-coming and out-going emails to and from the so-called ‘blacklisted’ companies, which are known to regularly send spam. However, many of the blacklisted companies argue that ISPs have no legal right to block their communication with users.

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What is the most feasible way for the authorities to prevent spam

With current email filtering technology still in its infancy, the most likely way to tackle email spam, without violating the rights of the individual or a company’s right to advertise, is to impose a web-wide opt-in scheme that requires users who want to receive spam to make a formal request for it. This initiative is already being used in several European countries, and should be adopted the in UK early in 2002.

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In the meantime, what can a user do to cut the amount of spam they receive

There are some measures that users can take to prevent spam entering their inboxes:

• Many email spammers offer users the option to unsubscribe from their mailing list. This is often a fake offer and instead of removing the user from the database they use the incoming message as a signal that the email address is active and so continue sending the spam. Therefore, as a user, try not to send messages to spamming companies from your personal email address. If they don’t hear a peep out of you for a long enough period it is likely that they will stop sending you spam.
• There are various software packages on the market that can help to filter incoming emails and can block messages containing certain words, such as ‘for free’, or ‘pornography’, from reaching your inbox. Such filters are expensive to buy and are best recommended for business users.
• When you sign-up to a new email service, remember to tick the box that says ‘No’ I do not wish to receive unsolicited commercial emails.
• Certain ISPs are better than others at blocking spam messages from reaching their users Find out which ISPs have a good record for blocking spam and sign up to them instead. For example, a Yahoo email address is thought to be less likely to be hit by spam than a Hotmail address.