Fight Against Spam

Spam FAQ

This FAQ is written solely to offer information about SPAM found on the news groups and SPAM that lands in your mailbox after you first post to a news group. I spend many hours each week on the USENET news groups and have no fears whatsoever about posting anything on them, but my situation is different than most since no one but me reads my e-mail and there are NEVER any children using my computers.

The views and opinions expressed here are solely those of the author (or anyone he has plagiarized) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the folks operating the newsgroup, web site or any other place you found it.

I teach people how to use their computers and especially how to use them on the Internet. Each person who is new to the Internet and especially to news groups seem to have fears that I try to address. If you read this FAQ and have a particular question that is not addressed here feel free to drop me a the address at the end of this FAQ and I will try to answer it or include the information in updates to this FAQ. If you are an experienced user and find a flaw I urge you to write and tell me so I can make any corrections or additions that are necessary.

So, with your indulgence, lets begin.

>> {{{A note to parents. If you are concerned about my information teaching your children to "dodge" you, I remind you that this information is available in thousands of other places including the schools. So, if you are doing your job as parents and monitoring, mentoring, and teaching your children the things they need to know to become adults I am not a problem. If YOU aren't doing THOSE things don't get on my ass for doing MY job. Besides, where were you when you found this FAQ? (It's 10:00 p.m., do your kids know where YOU are?)}}}<<

The information is divided into 2 sections titled:
SECTION 1: The SPAM you receive in your E-mail.
and
SECTION 2: The SPAM that clogs up your downloads.

Hopefully you will find what you wanted to know.

SECTION 1: The SPAM you receive in your E-mail

Q: If I visit the Usenet news groups won't I start receiving a lot of unwanted SPAM in my e-mail?

A: NO. The fact of the matter is that just simply going to a news group, downloading headers, downloading the postings or binaries, and such will not leave you open to SPAM. Other than sending an electronic signal to the news server that you want to look at something no information about YOU is transmitted. In fact the only transmitted information is your computer telling the server computer that you want something and it automatically sends it to you. The computers are very impersonal about this and unless you are very actively involved in something that has the "authorities" looking directly at you for some reason it is unlikely that any human will ever know which other humans read or downloaded what. So, unless you are a big shot in the Mafia, or a drug-lord wannabe chances are nobody anywhere even cares much less will know enough about you to SPAM you. (If you fit in a category like the above mentioned you should have your "flunkies" getting all this for you anyway.)

Q: If I post an e-mail or binary file to a news group will I receive SPAM?

A. In all likelihood if you post to ANY news group using your real e-mail address in clear text you WILL be SPAMMED. Yes, even if you are posting something to a church related group you likely will see porno SPAM. (I can attest to the fact that you can post to a porno type news group and start getting religious oriented SPAM as well.) Worst of all is that you will get SPAM from every Multi_Level_Marketing scam, every GET_RICH_QUICK scam, and every other assorted "lower than a cockroach" life form that has Internet access.

Q: How did they pick me? I am not interested in that stuff.

A: One of the most lucrative businesses on the Internet these days seems to be the "mining" of e-mail addresses and selling them to all the "lower than a cockroach" life forms that want to "mine" the money out of your pockets. They scour the news groups (usually with automated programs), that suck up and record anything that even remotely resembles an e-mail address. These addresses are then added to the growing list and "ZAP" your "IT". They have no interest in you whatsoever except as a possible source of income and it costs then no more money to send out 50,000 e-mails than it does for 2,000. You were NOT picked, (although some of the SPAM will sound like they saw your name, post, or whatever and they just KNOW you are such an intelligent individual that you would NEVER pass up on the good deal they are offering you), you are simply a target of opportunity. That personal sounding e-mail was also transmitted in the exact same wording to 49,999 other folks this morning, so don't go feeling "SPECIAL" when you read it.

Q: Can I prevent this from happening to me?

A: NOPE !!

Q: SAY WHAT??

A: Let me put it this way, "If you have a computer, if you are connected to the Internet, and if you have an e-mail address, sooner or later you are going to receive some SPAM. Period, end of subject, no way around it, fact of life in the fast lane of the information superhighway, you will at some point receive a SPAM or even a bunch of them. But that ain't all as bad as it sounds. If only one person knows your e-mail address and that is you, and you don't give it out to anyone at all you won't receive SPAM or I should say as much of it. Bear in mind that some Internet Service Providers (ISP) have even "sold" or otherwise released list of the e-mail addresses they serve and as soon as that list is loose on the world it begins making the rounds so get an account, don't use it, don't give the address out and you can still get some SPAM

Q: So, what CAN I do?

A: First of all, don't panic or get too up tight about a little SPAM. After all that is one of the reasons your e-mail client has a "delete" button. Just toss it in the trash and be done with it like you do the "sweepstakes" crap that comes by "snail mail".

Q: But what if my _________ (insert your own: kids, wife, husband, lover, aunt, uncle, etc.) see it before I have a chance to delete it?

A: First of all you have to accept that sooner or later it going to happen and be ready to deal with it when it does. Secondly you simply take a few steps to minimize your exposure which in turn minimizes the flood of SPAM from ruining your life.

Q: OK, I explained to the wife that any strange porno e-mail is just a bunch of anonymous sends and that everyone gets them. Now what?

A: First pray that she is reasonable and understanding. Secondly you decide on one of several ways to keep the crap out of your mailbox. I am going to make a couple of suggestions you can try, although there are many more that I don't list here.

a. Probably the simplest way to keep SPAM out of your personal mailbox that your family can get to is to go out on the net and grab one of the "free" e-mail accounts that are available from "Hotmail", "NetAddress", "Yahoo", and others. Use that address for any replies and don't let anyone know you have it. You'll still get a bunch of crappy SPAM, but you won't have to worry about anyone else seeing it before you get it deleted. One thing you need to keep in mind though is that if you are using a web browser or news client like agent to read news groups and also as your primary e-mail client and use it to post to a group without first changing the configuration to reflect the other return address then this system won't work.

b. Alter your real e-mail address a bit so that anyone who sends to the address listed gets it kicked back to them. You can add a word to it as in the following example: real address is hsmaxey@usa.net if you alter it to read donotspamhsmaxey@usa.net and someone mines it and tries to use it they get a return saying it is invalid so they just delete it instead of trying to figure out how to reach you. Lots of people are starting to do this in their primary mail client but then when aunt Maybelle tries to write back she gets peeved cause it keeps coming back to her. Just deal with that and you have no problems. The folks on Usenet that may wish to contact you directly will know how to handle it though, so be careful where you go that someone may want to write you personally.

Q: That is too much for me to remember. Is there any other way to keep this off my personal computer at home?

A: Sure, don't post. Find a friend who will let you come over and use their computer but remember they may not want anything showing up on it either. Go to a "Cyber-Cafe" and use theirs if the will let you.

Most of all, just use a bit of common sense and your problems will be minimal.

SECTION 2: The SPAM that clogs up your downloads

Ok, this stuff is a bit different. These are the "commercial" postings that you do not want to keep getting since you already saw it and deleted it fifty times already. You know the ones, a blurry picture of a naked lady with big bold text written over the part you wanted to see advertising their web site where you can get the un-censored photo if you'll just let them have your credit card number, send them money or whatever the "hook" is. Or the ones with the phone numbers listed that you can call for psychic counseling or whatever and you know already they aren't doing it for free in spite of what the ad says. You already no the GET_RICH_QUICK_SCHEMES are crooked, designed to pluck money from suckers, and in most cases illegal.

But, you go to your favorite news group and it is full of these and if you happen to be wanting to download binaries you don't want them. What do you do? Well, here we go again........

Q: My favorite news group (alt.binaries.nekkid.poodle.pictures or some such), is loaded with headers that claim to be nekkid poodles, but is really just a crummy picture of a nekkid woman with an ad written over her telling me to go to this here free site and....

A: OK, it happens. It is going to happen as long as there are news groups so you have to learn to accept it and deal with it.

Q: How do I deal with it?

A: If you use agent, as I do, (unsolicited and not an ad), I sometimes like to select a lot of binary files and let them be downloading while I go off and do something else. If you select the whole group you will invariably get more junk than the postings you want. The thing to do is go through and select just the ones you want, (the ones you KNOW you have been looking for such as missing parts of a series), find another newsgroup that they are cross-posted to that may have fewer SPAMS, or if your reader supports filtering you can start building filters to avoid them.

Q: I tried selecting just the ones that looked interesting and avoiding the obvious SPAMS and I still get them.

A: Well, of course you do. They know you can read so they change the names, alter the file sizes, in fact they will even go so far as to rename them to correspond with popular series binaries hoping to trap you and I. It works too!! (Damnit!!) ;) The thing is, after a while you can almost smell them and start checking one post out of a stack of 200 that look suspicious and then avoid that batch. You are still going to get a few but you can reduce the numbers by paying a little bit of attention.

Q: What about the groups they are cross posted to? Won't I have the same problems there?

A: Quite possibly since the SPAMMERS keep up with what is posted to what groups. I have seen news groups spring up that were in different areas of the listings hoping to avoid the SPAMMERS though and it seems to work for a while. For example if you download a lot of binary files you are probably living in the alt.binaries.***.*** part of the news group listings. Read a complete header of your favorite "series" download sometime and see what else is listed as cross post sites. You might be surprised to find that it is also posted in a newsgroup you never heard of and the name of the group has nothing to do with the topic you like. Sometimes it takes the SPAMMERS a few days or even weeks to catch on and start slamming their crap into that group as well. by then a sharp poster has already picked out his next site for cross posting and has moved on to stay ahead of the SPAMMERS. If you see your favorite poster doing this post a thank you note for his or her efforts, they are doing it for you!! It means you will have to take a few extra minutes keeping up but the effort can be refreshing when you find your favorites without any SPAM wrapping its self around them. One other thing I noticed is that sometimes the SPAMMERS know that the majority of folks take the easy way out and stay with the group they are used to so a lot of them don't even bother to try and follow a poster that does a lot of cross-post moves. SPAMMERS are even lazier than we are. :) Besides they know that most folks are unaware of this and there is almost no traffic of suckers since the ones that know usually can't be hooked anyway.

Q: You mentioned filters, what are they and how do they help.

A: Filtering is my least preferred method of dealing with SPAM but it works really well for lots of folks if their client supports it. It is labor intensive on your part since SPAMMERS combat it by changing their addresses, file names, and file sizes.

As you have probably figured out by now Usenet postings and downloads really amount to a form of e-mail. (OK, no flames from you experts, this is to help new folks.) Most people aren't aware that their e-mail client will sometimes support filters and their news reader may as well. This is how it works in a VERY simplified format. To learn more you need to visit web sites and news groups that deal with your specific application. A filter basically looks for certain criteria and then uses that criteria to make a decision (based on what you tell it to do) about what to do with anything meeting the specified criteria.

For example, depending on the client you use it might look for certain words in the headers, or for file sizes that are greater or less than a certain size and automatically delete or ignore them. Since a lot of SPAMMERS use small size text or html files some folks (the ones after pictures are a good example) like to automatically delete or ignore anything smaller than say 250 lines. This tends to eliminate poor quality pictures, SPAM messages, and stupid flame letters.

The downside of filtering, (IMHO), aside from the labor intensity of it is that:

a. SPAMMERS know about it so they take steps to render your filtering attempts obsolete by the time they post again. Don't forget they like to use popular headers trying to trap folks and if your filter is set to find and download something in particular and they use that header or file name you just sucked up all the SPAM too.

b. I like to read and post to newsgroups and most written correspondence is only a few lines, (normally less than 20 lines), so if I filter everything below a certain size I miss those. Even more dreadful is that you will filter it out and fail to see and read my words of wisdom, arousing and amusing wit, or even better my flames to SPAMMERS. :)

I hope this helps a bit. Any questions, responses, suggestions, and yes even flames are welcome.

Max