Comment Articles

Fool spammers with multiple email addresses

Munir Kotadia ZDNet.co.uk

Published: 12 Dec 2003 14:47 GMT

Don't expect legislation to reduce the amount of spam you receive. The law can't stop spam from entering the country and spammers have already taken over more than half the general population's PC for their own uses. So for now, the only way to deal with spam is to manage the problem yourself, which is surprisingly simple and does not mean going out and buying some special software.

The EU has finally introduced its anti-spam laws, which mean that if a company sends commercial emails to consumers that haven't opted in to a specific mailing list, they face a £5,000 fine. However, this does not restrict companies from sending spam to current customers and does not protect businesses at all.

Additionally, the law has no control over spammers from outside the EU, even though the majority of our spam originates in the US. Incidentally, the US is considering introducing its own spam laws, but in reverse -- where users will have the right to opt out from being included in a mailing list. I'm even not going to bother trying to explain why an opt-out law would be daft, unworkable and lead to far more spam; the stupidity of the proposal just leaves me speechless.

With governments seemingly unable to deliver a sensible solution, users have to take control and manage their own spam. Unsurprisingly, there is no end of anti-spam software, but as with antivirus software, it needs constant updating as spammers find new methods to bypass ever more complex filtering algorithms.

One of the most annoying things properties of spam is an inability to trace the sender. If only it was possible to figure out exactly which Web site or service was responsible for selling on email addresses to the spammers, it would not only be possible to name and shame those companies into adopting an acceptable privacy policy, it might also be possible to prosecute.

Unfortunately, this is virtually impossible because most people generally have one or two email addresses that they use whenever subscribing to newsletters, entering competitions or subscribing to a Web site. These three actions are almost guaranteed to get your email address on somebody's spam list. If you go one step further and post your email address on a newsgroup, then there is little that will stop the avalanche of emails offering everything from Viagra to cut-price cigarettes.

It has also been suggested that when a user unsubscribes from a newsgroup or stops being a customer of a particular company, depending on privacy policy, the owner of the service has a right to sell that user's email address to a third party or send spam on behalf of "partners". This means the ex-subscriber's email account will be inundated with spam and they can do nothing about it.

But there is a solution.