How to Avoid Being Spammed
If you have come here expecting to find a magic pill to stop spam in your mailbox forever, we're sorry to disappoint you, but this is simply not possible - spammers collect email addresses from a wide variety of locations, and even the most experienced Internet users have difficulty avoiding having their address collected - however there are things you can do to reduce the likelihood of being spammed.
Firstly, note that there are two types of spam we usually talk about - "classic" spam (also known as "chickenboner spam"), and acquaintance spam. Chickenboner spam is spam you receive from people or organisations you have never heard of or dealt with before. Acquaintance spam is spam you receive from people or organisations you have dealt with before.
Where Do Chickenboner Spammers Get My Address?
What Should I Do to Avoid Chickenboner Spam?
I'm on Some Chickenboner's List - What Can I Do to Stop It?
Where Do Acquaintance Spammers Get My Address?
What Should I Do to Avoid Acquaintance Spam?
I'm on Some Acquaintance Spammer's List - What Can I Do to Stop It?
This All Sounds Depressing - What Else Can Be Done
Links to Other Sites on Avoiding Spam
Avoiding Chickenboner Spam
Where Do Chickenboner Spammers Get My Address?
Chickenboner spammers get your email address from potentially anywhere you make your address public. The chickenboner is distinguished by the fact that you probably have nothing to do with the spammer. They are contacting you out of the blue, and have usually used software to extract your address from a public location, along with hundreds, thousands and in some cases millions of others.
Locations chickenboner spammers obtain addresses include:
USENET news articles
Web pages
IRC
Other instant messaging services, such as ICQ
Web based discussion groups
Mailing list discussions (especially if archives of those discussions are made available on the web)
What Should I Do to Avoid Chickenboner Spam?
Either avoid posting to USENET, or if you do post, use a false return address. In your signature, you can give your real email address, but be careful to do so in such a way that a program will not be able to recognise that it is an email address. Detailed information on doing this can be found in the Address Munging FAQ.
Do not put your email address on a web page, especially in "mailto:" links. While there are some services available that claim to be able to generate HTML that creates mailto links that spammers cannot collect addresses from, the effectiveness of these techniques is highly questionable, and assumes that spammers and the people who write their software have brains smaller than that of a turnip. While it is attractive to believe that this is true, it is most likely not.
Avoid IRC, or if possible use a false user name while connecting to IRC. Note that this may be a violation of the IRC server administrator's policy, so check this before you connect using a false user name.
Instant messaging services usually have several privacy settings, some of which may make it harder for spammers to find you - check with the documentation for your instant messaging software to see what privacy options are available.
If you participate in web based discussion groups, make sure you use a false email address.
If you participate in a mailing list, there may be nothing you can do to stop a spammer from getting your email address from that list. Spammers can sign up to mailing lists just as easily as you can, and if they do, they can get your address from any message you send to the list. You cannot use a false return address in email, because many things simply won't work - for example, if you mistype the recipients address, you will never know your message didn't make it. The only real options here are to not participate at all, or to accept the fact that you may be spammed as a result.
Note that these steps still won't shield you from all chickenboner spam, but they will reduce the amount of chickenboner spam you do get.
I'm on Some Chickenboner's List - What Can I Do to Stop It?
Once you are on a chickenboner's list, there is nothing you can do to stop it. There are several things you might try to do to stop it that are a bad idea. Specifically:
DO NOT use the "remove" facility spammers frequently offer. Even when the address given in that facility works (which it usually does not), some spammers use this facility merely to verify that somebody reads email sent to that address, and will then sell lists of such addresses to other spammers, who often find these addresses to be of more value.
DO NOT attempt to retaliate by sending large numbers of messages or very large messages back to the spammer. This is illegal in most places (including the whole of Australia). Further, the sending address in the spam may be forged, and belong to an innocent third party. Even if the address does belong to the spammer, this only serves to verify the validity of your address.
There are some things you can do, although their effect is likely to be limited:
YOU CAN use filters in your email software to block a sender's address, BUT chickenboners rarely use the same address twice, so this is not likely to have much effect if any. What's more, the address may be a forgery of an innocent third party's address, and that party may be unfairly harmed if everybody blocks them due to such spam.
YOU CAN complain to the Internet Service Providers used to inject the spam, hosting the return address for the spam, or hosting the web site advertised in the spam, BUT this does not seem to have the effect of reducing spam, as the spammers expect that this will happen. It may have some effect if you complain quickly, and the ISP hosting the web site shuts that site down. If you do want to complain about spam, see our Guide on Actively Fighting Spam.
Avoiding Acquaintance Spam
The distinguishing factor with acquaintance spam is that you have dealt with the spammer before in some way.
Where Do Acquaintance Spammers Get My Address?
Acquaintance spammers usually (but not always!) get your address because you, or somebody you know, gave it to them. Acquaintaince spammers obtain addresses by even more methods than chickenboner spammers:
Product registration cards
Registrations with web servers
Online purchases
Email messages you have exchanged with people at the spam-sending company
Other forms you fill in that request your email address
Calling your office and asking the receptionist for your email address
E-Appending - this is a service provided by some unscrupulous companies where they attempt to guess the email address of somebody given a traditional mailing list containing only names, street addresses, telephone number and employer details. Some acquaintance spammers use these services so they can spam people who have intentionally withheld their email address.
What Should I Do to Avoid Acquaintance Spam?
At one time, it was thought that a web site displaying a privacy seal could be trusted with your email address. Unfortunately, the best known privacy seal - TRUSTe, has proven to be perhaps the most reliable indicator possible that a website WILL violate your privacy. TRUSTe has regrettably proven by example that privacy seals sponsored by corporate interests simply cannot be trusted.
At one time, we also believed that a web site whose privacy policy states that they will not spam would honour that promise. Unfortunately, there have been examples of high profile companies not respecting that promise, including one high profile auction site, which reversed the preferences of users who had not checked the opt-in box on their registration forms in late 2000, and another high profile web service, which states the following in its privacy policy:
From time to time, <name suppressed> and/or its partners may wish to contact individual users regarding community news or to make promotional offers. However, such communications will only be delivered to users who have previously approved them.
and now - in perhaps the most blatant breach of a privacy policy ever - spams all of their registered users, with the following statement given at the bottom of their spams, admitting that they did not have the prior approval required by their privacy policy.
During your registration, we were not able to determine your interest in receiving Marketing correspondence from us. We value our relationship with you and believe it is important to understand your preference. If you don't want to receive further marketing information from us, send an e-mail to us at: <address suppressed>, including your registered e-mail address. We will make every effort to respect your request in the future. If we do not hear from you, we will assume that you will appreciate receiving future information from us.
Since some high profile web sites are now explicitly violating their privacy policy, and explicitly disrespecting requests not to receive promotional material, our advice on avoiding acquaintance spam has become:
DO NOT supply your email address to a commercial web site - if the web site requires an email address, use anything@example.com, or me@privacy.net (for more information on the privacy.net address, click here). Note that the domain names "example.com", "example.net" and "example.org" are reserved, and guaranteed never to be allocated to anybody, so nobody else will get the spam if you use one of those domains.
DO NOT supply your email address on product registration cards
DO NOT supply your email address on any form provided by a business, even if the form asks for it
DO NOT supply your email address to a business at all
DO instruct your receptionist and other work colleagues not to give out your email address, and that anybody asking for your email address must ask for it from you directly.
If you find you must send email to a company, DO put a prominent notice in your signature file stating that "The email address used for sending this message is not to be added to any database, list or mailing list without my prior, explicit permission."
I'm on Some Acquaintance Spammer's List - What Can I Do to Stop It?
If an online business spams you, there is almost always an alternative that is just as good, or possibly even better - this is a good opportunity to find somebody else to give your business to, preferably one that will have more respect for your privacy.
If you are spammed by somebody you have dealt with before, it is appropriate to complain directly to them, however we recommend not doing so via the "remove" address provided in the spam alone, as such addresses are usually set up to automatically remove you without anybody reading the mail, and that way the spammer will not know they have upset one of their customers.
Statistics show that as many as 30% of the customers of a business won't do business with them again after that business spams them - unfortunately most of the customers who leave won't actually tell the business, so the business will go on spamming their customers. It is important to let the business know you are upset and that they have lost a customer.
Try to identify the person responsible for the mailing, and anybody else you feel appropriate. They have assumed that because of you have dealt with them, they have the right to email you any bulk marketing material they like, therefore they must also feel you also have the right to email them whatever you like, and "them" might include anybody from the CEO down to the mail boy - the spammer has decided on the rules here, and if your address is fair game to them, then their addresses are all fair game to you. Note that it is important to get to people not involved in the spam, because the people who are involved have a vested interest in covering up complaints, but try to keep the initial list of recipients to ten or less.
If you know the names of the executives of the company, try "firstname.lastname@example.com" - this will frequently work. Also, looking up the company's domain name at the Geektools whois proxy will give you some more addresses to try. Finally, "postmaster@example.com" is usually delivered to somebody who will forward the message to the appropriate person, and when a business starts spamming its customers, "abuse@example.com" is often set up by the system administrators to be delivered to somebody in a company who is interested in arguing your case for you.
This All Sounds Depressing - What Else Can Be Done?
Since there is no real way to stop yourself being spammed, and any action you take to reduce the spam you do get means restricting your own activities, and as such results in you making compromises to avoid it, you may now be asking what else can be done to stem the tide of unwanted junk in your email box.
For
chickenboner spam, there are several organisations, including
CAUBE.AU (Australia), CAUCE
(United States), EuroCAUCE
(Europe), CAUCE India,
and CAUCE Canada, which are pushing
for laws to restrict spam. In other regions, you might consider
becoming involved in the Asia
Pacific Coalition Against Unsolicited Commercial Email, or the
International
Coalition Against Unsolicited Commercial Email. Joining one of
these organisations costs nothing, and is one way you can help to
reduce the problems of spam. Click on the image, or the "Join
CAUBE.AU" link in the left hand column to join in Australia.
The European Union has banned most chickenboner spam and some acquaintaince spam, and Australia has now banned some acquaintance spam, as well as most chickenboner spam, however bans on acquaintance spam are unlikely to happen elsewhere. Consequently, if you want acquaintance spam to stop, you need to complain loudly to the acquaintance spammer - without complaints from their customers, many companies will think they have no reason to change.
Links to Other Sites on Avoiding Spam
How
do I Avoid Spam? - Hoosiers.Net
Five
Easy Ways to Avoid Spam - ZDNet
Managing
E-Mail Overload - Home & Family Finance Online
JUNKBUSTERS
Guide to Staying Off Junk Email Lists - Junkbusters
Avoid
Spam - New Horizon
Taking
Control of Spam - Late Night Software
I
Don't Like Spam - Paeonia Balognia
Email
Tips - MailCard
Don't
reply to request removal - Telstra BigPond
How
to Avoid Spam Email - NoahSays.com
How
to Avoid Spam - Zedtoo
Net
Safety - EarthLink
Take
the Junk Out of Your Email - EarthLink
The
Great CNET Spam-Off - C|Net
Advice
for Newbies - Freeserve (UK)
The
WURD on Spam - WorldNet User's Reference Desk