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THE WAY TO A SPAM FREE WEB

To know how to reduce or avoid spam, it helps to know how spammers get your email address.

Spammers don't have the time to find out thousands of email addresses and sit at their machines typing them in, one by one. They use a list of addresses that they have bought off a list-seller.

These lists are usually collected by a program called a "spambot" which has the job of searching the internet for valid email addresses. One part of the internet that is of most interest to list-sellers is the USENET and all of the thousands of newsgroups. Obviously all the people who use this part of the internet have valid email addresses, all that the list-seller has to do is point his spambot in that direction and wait for it to start sending back all the addresses it can find. If you use a newsgroup and don't do anything to protect your on-line identity, odds are that your email address will end up on a spammer's list.

Some spambots just sit on a website and identify the email address of all visitors (they use the identity in your browser which automatically passes on the information unless you use an anonymizer or have protected your identity information). For this reason, you need to think twice before visiting questionable sites.

A problem that most of these spambots have is that they just collect anything that looks like an address (username@domain.com). The cannot tell whether the address is valid. This is why they concentrate on USENET and newsgroups. Some unscrupulous spammers will create a web-page or return email address that they say is to be used to take names of spam-lists. They then use all the details they collect to make a new list which is consists entirely of known valid addresses. Such lists are worth a lot of money to list-sellers. The rule of thumb is: if the material being advertised is questionable, the "Take me off your list" page or email address is probably questionable as well.

There are a couple of places where someone who is developing a spam-list might collect details manually. In AOL you can go to a screen under "People" ("Search AOL Member Directory"), type in a couple of letters, press "Search" and find hundreds of valid screen names (a screen name is the AOL equivalent of an email address). Type the details into a separate file and "Voila!", you have the beginnings of a spam list. Yahoo!GeoCities has a similar function.

Another excellent place to look for valid email addresses is in the thousands of AOL Chat Rooms. Spam-list collectors create spambots that just sit in a Chat Room and collect screen names of all who enter. Add "@aol.com" to a screen name and you have a valid internet email address.

So, we now know how spammers get your email address. How do you stop that from happening? You could stop using USENET and newsgroups altogether. You could get off AOL or cancel your Yahoo!GeoCities account. That's a little extreme and may not be possible. So what can you do?

The best idea (beyond always using anonymous remailers) is to disguise you email address. Although a spambot is tireless and can work twenty-four hours a day, it is pretty stupid. As I have already mentioned, a spambot cannot tell whether an address is valid or not.

For this reason, many people using newsgroups disguise their email addresses like so: "spam_bandit@yahoo.com.nospam" or "spam_bandit.nospam@yahoo.com" or "spam_bandit@yahoo.com.removethis". The address is still there but there is an obvious addition that makes the address invalid. A real person can work it out but a spambot may be completely lost. I suspect that as more people use this technique, spambots will be made smarter so that they remove the most obvious tags like ".nospam" and ".removethis". Therefore, I suggest that you choose to add something original, but still human friendly, to your address to make it invalid.

Here are some suggestions using a couple of fictional addresses:

As you can see, you can be creative with what you write and where you write it. Here are a few more ploys with another fictional email address:

You could also make your address unreadable to a spambot by writing it in the form "spam_bandit(at)yahoo(dot)com". This doesn't even look like an email address to a spambot and will be ignored.

You can't make it impossible for spammers to work out your email address (or people you want to email you won't be able to work it out either) but you can make it difficult. If it is too much effort, then most times they won't bother.

This is all fine, but how do you change how your email address appears? By far the two most popular email clients are Microsoft Outlook Express and Netscape Messenger, so I will show you with these two. If you have something else, check out the steps below and use the help files to work out how to do the same in your email client.

Microsoft Outlook Express:

1. Click on "Tools"

2. Click on "Accounts..."

3. Double-click the account you want to work with.

4. Change the details in the box marked "E-mail address:"

5. Press "Ok"

6. Press "Close"

Netscape Messenger:

1. Click on "Edit"

2. Click on "Preferences..."

3. Click on "Identity"

4. Change the details in the box marked "E-mail address:"

5. Press "Ok"

Neither of these routines will change your real email address, just the way it appears to people who receive your messages (and to spambots sitting on any websites you visit). If you use a signature with your email address in it, don't forget to change it there as well.

If you are on AOL and cannot or don't want to change to a better Internet Provider, there is still a way to reduce the amount of spam you will be exposed to. Follow these steps:

1. Click on "My AOL"

2. Click on "My Member Profile"

3. Click on "OK"

4. If there is any detail in there at all, remove it.

Now try to do a search on the first three or four letters of your screen name (look under "People" the "Search AOL Member Directory"). It doesn't come up, does it? Now try searching using your full screen name. There it is!

If you choose to stay with AOL and want to still visit Chat Rooms, use the fact that each AOL account has five screen names. Create a special screen name dedicated to chatting and surfing the internet. In all likelihood, this screen name will be spammed but you can just ignore any and all mail sent there.

THE WAY TO A SPAM FREE WEB

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