Spam Wars: Report From the Front

With the war on terrorism, in Iraq and Afghanistan, not to mention other conflicts around the world, the war on spam may seem small potatoes. But with the ramping up of arsenals to combat this by AOL, MSN and Yahoo, the advent of pay-to-send email introduced by Habeas, Inc. and others jumping on that bandwagon, things are starting to get pretty intense. Oh...not for the spammers. Not by a long shot. I mean the legitimate online business owners, who jump through hoops, as it is to prevent being unjustly accused of UCE. And let's not forget all the filtering programs individual users buy to block the crap from reaching their inboxes.

I receive more spam now than ever after being online long enough for the unscrupulous to latch onto my addresses). Even after downloading the AOL 8.0 that touts how many millions of unwanted email they block each day. Now, MSN has added another feature to its program: image blocking. Which I suppose is good; but it gives the option to view the image to the recipient. I just wonder: if an underage child happened to receive one of these blocked images, wouldn't his/her natural, innocent curiosity cause them to open it? Maybe, maybe not. One might say that the parents would use filters to keep such smut out of their child's inbox. But the spammers are very resourceful, if not determined. Any email they get hold of is fair game to them. They've already found many ways to get around the filters.

I've begun a campaign of unsubscribing to a lot of this email that I supposedly "subscribed" to. I find it interesting that in the To: section of the header, many times my address is typed in all caps. Funny, I've NEVER typed any of my addresses that way. Which just confirms, that those particular addresses were shared or bought. I've also come across many different methods of unsubscribing. Actually, there are only two: reply to the spam mail with something like remove in the subject line. Or a link is provided that sends me to a webpage with a form to input the address I wish to have removed and submit. Both can be effective, but there are downfalls to each. With the reply email, there is always the chance the address it goes to is not valid. The returned email (and this usually comes back within a few minutes) reports the address does not exist, or it is full (not many of those), the query cannot be input, or some such error, or, my personal favorite, the address has been deactivated. Hummm...I wonder why?

I particularly like the link to a webpage, but these don't always work either. Sometimes, I can't even get to the page -the website is not responding, there might be too many people trying to access it (Imagine that!). Some times, the webpage cannot be found because: A- it doesn't exist, or B-it may have been moved. Now, try to find it.

But don't think that getting an actual page will result in a successful removal. Some that I have been able to get to have the text field to input my address. I type it in, hit submit, and the address is removed from the field. No confirmation of a successful removal. NOTHING. I suspect a dummy page here, but have no proof of that. Then, there are the ones that, when submitted, you get a FILE ERROR. Huh? And trying again results in the same error. My personal favorite with this method is the one where I get a really helpful error page that tells me to contact the webmaster, giving an address with instructions to report what I was doing and the time it happened. O- kay. Guess what? Not two minutes later, I get an email from my old friend, MAILER DAEMON telling me the address does not exist. Daemon is always on top of things, isn't he? Gotta love 'im.

Usually, when you use the link method for a successful removal, the confirmation page will give you the status of your request. The removal can happen instantly (Yes!) or there can be a delay from 24 hours up to 7 days, depending on the service that is being used. I began this campaign over a week ago, and I'm beginning to see less email in my inboxes. This has taken some time as I have addresses I use for my business as well as my personal email. It looks as though it's starting to pay off.

At least for now.

Debra Stiens is the owner of New Freedom Marketing http://www.newfreedom.net Subscribe to the New Freedom Newsletter and download "Killer Internet Marketing Strategies" by Shelley Lowery as a free gift. http://www.newfreedom.net/newsletter.htm