Internet Marketing Newsletter by Charlotte Howard SEO Web Design
November, 2008

We All Dread It - S P A M. Here Are Two Solutions

Happy Fall Greetings Everyone!

Let's talk about email - in particular Spam. Boy, do I get a lot of it! And, I am sure most of you do too. You know what is really weird? I get Spam from myself! You might even get Spam from me, but it's not really from me. For example, if I "send" you an email, and the subject has anything in it that has to do with "mortgages", "pharmaceuticals", "degrees", "size", etc, you should just delete the email and not even open it. It is not an authentic e-mail from me. My emails have a subject line that makes sense. The subject will have something in it that demonstrates that it is really me talking to you, not an imposter.

I subscribe to CNet's Community Newsletter and there was a question posted recently about this phenomenon. It's called "Spoofing". Here are some of the answers:

"Hi Ted,

don't worry about this too much - I know it's very worrying when you get these spam messages apparently from yourself. It's called "spoofing", a technique where some random email address is used to replace the real senders email address. I won't go into how it's done, but it isn't rocket science!

The spammer has obtained your email address from somewhere, possibly just a random scan of email traffic on the web or an intercept server, which we also don't need to go into. (S)he uses this address in the "To:" field of the email and so it's no big deal to "spoof" it into the from address. The likelihood is that your email address is used only for the copy of the spam to you.

You may be equally concerned about messages that address you by name in the subject line - they are set up in pretty much the same way.

Usually, you can recognize any of this spam that gets through your ISP's spam filters, as you have in these cases. The safe option is not to open the message and absolutely, do not click on any of the embedded links. Just delete the message, unread, from your inbox.

Can you find out where they are coming from? Probably not. If you display the full headers of the message (an option of most email clients) you may get a clue from the routing information displayed but if the real sender is smart enough to spoof the from address, (s)he will also know how to cover their tracks.

Sadly, it's something we all have to put up with. I don't think you need worry about your own genuine messages being blocked. Just delete this rubbish unread. If it gets to be a big problem, you might want to consider trying one of the personal mail filters like Mailwasher or similar..."

Here is another comment:

"... By the way, in the extreme, you can usually set up your email so that you receive absolutely no email whatsoever, except from people you know directly and have actually listed. This would eliminate almost all spam. You can do this with any email program without even using any kind of special anti-spam software or features. Of course, this means that if a friend changes their email address without telling you, you'll never get their email. If you buy something on line, you'll have to add their email (or their entire domain), to your whitelist. Inconvenient, but for some, well worth it."

Click here to read the whole article with 86 responses There are many great explanations, ideas, and solutions you might want to know more about!

Spam Solutions To Try

I am used to Spam, and spend just a small amount of time everyday managing it by using filters in my e-mail client. However, if you want to know of two other ways to be more aggressive in filtering out Spam, you might want to try SpamArrest or Mailwasher. They both have a F.R.E.E Trial. Highly recommended!

Also, please check with the company that hosts your site. They may have spam-fighting tools or settings up on the server that just need to be adjusted.

Have a great day!

Charlotte Howard
Lead Designer, Internet Marketing Brain
Charlotte Howard SEO Web Design

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