Spam Category
Private: Manage Spam Accusations
You worked hard to build your opt in, targeted, bulk email list. You request double confirmation at subscription. You have an easy unsubscribing method and still… you run the risk of spam accusation.
Why?
- There are people that subscribe to your newsletter and then quickly forget about it.
- There are people that subscribe their friends or …enemies for newsletters, without asking permission.
- There are people that, wishing to unsubscribe your newsletter, accidentally or not, hit ?This is SPAM? button.
- There are people that use your free content in spam emails, and people that won’t believe you don’t have anything to do with the spammer.
- If you don’t keep your list clean of bounces, your ISP server may get confused about your tactics.
Sometimes people are so bitter to catch the spammer that they go on carelessly accusing innocent persons.
What is there to do about it?
- Validate subscriptions after a double opt in request.
- Request confirmation from subscribers that they have read your privacy policy and agreed with it.
- Don’t lie about your identity, don’t lie about the subject of your message, don’t send unrequested email, honour unsubscription requests immediately.
- Keep your list clean of bounces.
- Get listed on ISP’s white lists.
- When you receive a spam accusation, do your own research to see what really happened.
- Don’t freak out. Can Spam Law is not meant to nail you, you can use it to prove your good faith.
- Ultimately, if there’s no way to prove you weren’t spamming, prove at least that you follow some basic rules:
- don’t lie in the ‘Subject’ field about the message’s topic;
- allow people to opt-out;
- don’t use return false addresses.
One important detail is that the 2003 Can Spam Law does not classify spamming as an illegal practice. You can send unsolicited bulk email as long as you observe the forementioned rules. Ultimately, think geographicaly: what is illegal in some states (or countries) is not outlawed by others.
Private: How to Avoid Spam
So, spam legislation does not outlaw spam. Surprised? Dissapointed? If you are a heavy internet user, you’re certainly dissapointed. Maybe not yet surprised, as this is not the first time when a legislation act fails to represent those who pay for the ability to work in a equitable system (and even for the laws to be released). And we believe that the Can Spam Act partially fails to represent legitimate internet users in the problem of spam.
Having that as a fact, what can you do? For sure you can use some of the following tips to became less spammed:
- Mask your email address. When you participate in discussion lists or forums, you want to be able to publish your email address. The first thing you can do is write it in a form that an email harvesting software can’t read it as what it really is. E.g. you won’t write yourname@domain.com but Yourname(at)domain(dot)com, or other form you know it can be interpreted by a real person.
- In chat rooms, use other screen name than your email ID.
- Keep separate addresses for business emails and personal ones. When you register to a discussion list you can use a disposable address, which you can abandon when you are no longer interested in the subject.
- Choose user names that are not easy to generate by automated programs (e.g. combinations of letters and numbers.)
- Don’t reply by an opt-out request to messages that don’t follow the basic rules of mass email campaigns, as they are specified in the spam law. (See details about Can Spam Law).
- Always read the ‘Terms of Agreement’ pages before subscribing to newsletters or other forms of email advertising. You may not agree with them afterall.
- Do not open messages that are obviously spam. They are usually sent in HTML format, and the sender can track addresses who open the email. That validates your address in their list.
- Opt-in for the text version of the newsletters instead of HTML, when possible.
- Do not use autoresponders, as they validate the existance of your email address.
- Use an auto-preview option to check emails before actually downloading them.
- Use an antivirus program that is set to update daily.
- Use spam filters provided by your email client.
- Report spam when you receive it.
Private: Ethical and Legal Problems of Spam
Ten Reasons Spammers Are Not Ethical
- They don’t care about email privacy.
- They generate immense costs for ISP servers.
- They generate costs at end-users without asking permission.
- They make you waste time downloading their messages.
- They trick you into confirming your email address, just to flood your mailbox with more spam.
- They want to trick you into purchasing obscure-quality services and products.
- They hide under bogus email addresses and make their ISPs untrackable.
- They lie about what they offer in the message header.
- They expect to get rich on your expense.
- They don’t mind selling your email address to other spammers.
Oh, sorry, we forgot one: when you mailbox is spam-full, some important messages you’ve been supposed to receive will bounceback to the sender. These are, most of the times, business opportunities YOU lose. Try to estimate them in figures, and remember them when having second thoughts in reporting a spammer.
A Legal Point of View Over Spam
Internet users now have a legal instrument to fight back somebody who does nothing else but try to steal from them, just like criminals in real life. Some may argue that spam does not compare to murder. OK, maybe not, but it does compare to fraude, in fact it is fraude.
The Can Spam Act became law in the United States on January 1st 2004. It refers to non-solicited pornography and marketing emails. The law gets thoroughly into regulating the right to ‘opt out’ when receiving an unsolicited commercial email (or spam) and less into the obligation for the sender to prove an existing request for subscription to that specific message.
Can Spam Act considers to be bulk email:
- more than 100 messages sent over in 24 hours;
- more than 1,000 messages sent over in a 7 days period;
- more than 10,000 messages sent over in a 30 days period.
The most important thing probably to be noticed about the Can Spam Act is that it doesn’t forbid the unsolicited commercial messages (or bulk email messages) to be sent out. You only have to follow some specified rules:
- Do not hide your identity in the ‘From:’ field.
- Include an explicit postal address where you can be contacted (not an P.O. Box)
- Do not lie or mislead in the ‘Subject:’ field.
- Include a true, visible and easy to use ‘opt out’ field in your message.
- Process opt-out requests in a period of maximum 30 days.
- If the message has not been sent on an opt-in base, include a clear statement that you are sending an advertisement or solicitation.
- The adresses that provided an opt-out request should become unusable in any other form. You can not provide them to other users or use them in further campaigns.
Moreover, if you have the consent of the receiver to send promotional/commercial emails, you don’t need to further specify this in the email body. The law also indulges the ‘transactional and relationship emails’ not to include opt-out request or physical postal address. The terms ‘transactional’ and ‘relationship’ refer to emails sent out to facilitate commercial transactions that were previously discussed with the receivers.
Unsolicited Bulk Email
Here are the definitions of a few spam related terms:
Definitions
Acquaintance SPAM: Unsolicited email sent to people that had previous contact with you as a business operator: old customers, subscribers to one of your newsletters etc.
Unsolicited Bulk Email (UBE): is an email sent to large numbers of recipients without their knowledge or consent, often advertising commercial products or services. It is the electronic equivalent of paper junk mail.
Unsolicited Commercial Email (UCE): is any commercial electronic mail message sent, often in bulk, to a consumer without the consumer’s prior request or consent. The low cost of sending UCE distinguish it from other forms of unsolicited marketing.
Junk Email :Apart from UBE/UCE, junk email can also be an automatically-sent message by someone’s virus-infected computer that has your address in the contact list. UBE and UCE can also be considered junk email.
Spam: Every email in the previous cathegories.
How do spammers get email addresses
Spammers have several ways of acquiring a person’s e-mail address. Once they have it, they can start inundating you with unwelcome mail.
- From web pages. Spammers have programs which spider through web pages, looking for email addresses, e.g. email addresses contained in “mail to”.
- From posts to UseNet. There are programs that just look at articles headers which contain email address while other programs look at signatures, through programs that take everything that contain a “@” character.
- From mailing lists. Regularly the spammers attempt to get the lists of subscribers to mailing lists, knowing that the majority of e-mail addresses are valid.
- From different web forms. There are sites that request various details via forms. Spammers can get email addresses from these form because the form becomes available on the Internet.
- From chat rooms. Many spammers collect e-mail addresses from different chat rooms, knowing that those are “live” addresses and send spam to those email addresses.
- Buying lists from others.
- From messages you sent privately to friends if they forward your note to a large group.
These resulting lists of addresses are often collected by list merchants (typically spammers) who then sell the lists to other spammers.
How can you reduce the amount of UBE?
- Avoid to use your e-mail address in the header of postings made to news groups.
- Avoid to post your real email address in a public forum.
- Avoid to put your real email address on a web page.
- Avoid to type your email address in on-line registration forms.
- Never reply to a spam message.
- Remove yourself from on-line directories that keep lists of Internet user’s names and email addresses.