Who did the cooking!? (Where did everything start?)
The current meaning of the word "spam" has nothing to do with ham that has been spiced. In the early 1990s, people used the word because of a skit by the British comedy group Monty Python. In "The SPAM Skit," a couple tries to decide what to order for dinner from a menu that only has Hormel's canned ham.
Repetition is the key to how funny the skit is.
In the 2.5-minute skit, the actors say the word "SPAM" more than 104 times! Because of this, people on Usenet started calling unwanted posts to newsgroups "spam." The name has stayed.
Spammers soon turned their attention to email, and so did the language. Today, the word is no longer hard to understand. "Unsolicited Commercial E-Mail," or "UCE," is now more often called "spam."
Why do good people get bad spam?
You've probably been spammed before. Your email address got into the hands of a spammer, and now your inbox is full of unwanted messages. What is going on? Several things could happen.
Backstabbing Businesses.
Businesses often keep a list of the e-mail addresses of their customers. This is a perfectly legal thing to do, and it usually doesn't lead to anything bad. Sometimes, though, the desire to make money quickly is too strong, and these lists are sold or rented to advertisers from outside the company. What happened? A lot of email that wasn't asked for, which is a serious breach of trust.
Making a random address.
Random address generators are computer programmes that just "guess" email addresses. There are more than 100 million Hotmail addresses, so it shouldn't be too hard to guess some of them. Unluckily for many netizens who didn't know what was going on, not too hard. A lot of spammers also try to guess
Web Spiders.
Web spiders are the most sneaky list-making tools available today. All of the big search engines have "spiders" that crawl the web and save information about each page. Spammers use tools that crawl the web and save any email address they find. Your personal web page lists your e-mail address? Get ready for an attack!
Taking data from chat rooms.
ISPs offer chat rooms where people only know each other by their screen names. Spammers know that the first part of your e-mail address is your screen name. Why waste time guessing email addresses when lurking in a chat room for a few hours can give you a list of addresses that are still in use?
The bad marketing idea of the poor.
It didn't work for phone companies, and it won't work for people who sell things through email. But some spammers still keep their own email lists like friends and family. Even though these lists are made up of the addresses of known spammers and people or businesses that the owner has dealt with in the past, they are still fake. Why? You are the only one who can tell someone they can send you email. It's not enough to get permission from a friend of a friend.
Stop getting so many emails.
Already too much spam? Try using the filters in your email client. Many of them let you block certain email addresses. Block the sender's address every time you get spam. Spammers go from address to address, and you may be on a lot of lists, but this method will at least slow the flow.
Use more than one email address, and make sure one of them is "clean." Many Internet users find that this method slows down the flow of spam. Use one address for things that won't get you spam, like sending emails to your friends or signing up with businesses you trust. Don't use your good address on the Internet. Get a free address to use on the Internet and in chat rooms.
If nothing else works, you might want to change your screen name or open a new email account. When you do that, you'll start fresh with no spam. Protect your email address this time!
Avoid being added to spam lists in the future.
Want to use the Internet without getting caught up in spam? The best thing to do is to avoid trouble. Don't use an email address that is easy to guess. Don't use your address for spam-related things to keep it clean. You shouldn't put it on any websites or use it in chat rooms or newsgroups.
Check out a business before you give them your good email address. Are there parts of its user agreement that talk about how to stop spam? Does a privacy policy say what will happen to your address and how it will be used? The nicest companies also post their anti-spam policies in plain English, so you know exactly what you're getting into.
You don't think you're a spammer? Be Sure.
Many first-time marketers have sent spam to their audience by accident. Most of the time, he stops right where he is when he gets his first few hundred complaints and some rude phone messages. But by then, the spammer might have to pay his ISP to clean up, and he might have a bad reputation that is hard to fix.
The best way to avoid this is to know what spam is: if the people who get your mass e-mails did not ask to hear from you, you are spamming them.
Follow your gut. No matter how much the seller swears by them, don't buy a million addresses for $10. Just say no if something sounds fishy. You'll save a lot of money in the long run.
The Last Strike.
Spam is on the way out in the online world. People will stop sending spam when it stops getting through. Help out by not buying from spammers. When your business looks for tech companies to work with, it should only choose those that take a strong stand against spam.
Spam has been around for a long time, both in food and in e-mail. Hormel Foods opened a real-life museum about SPAM this year. Even though the museum has the Monty Python SPAM Skit, there is no word yet on whether or not there will be an exhibit about unsolicited commercial e-mail. But if all the good people on the Internet work together, Hormel's ham in a can will last much longer than the Internet virus UCE.
