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| What is Spam? |
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| Spam is unsolicited e-mail. In most cases, spam is sent in bulk, to many addresses at once, often with variations in the subject and "from" addresses in order to avoid detection by spam filters. There are a number of different purposes for spam: - Sending offers for products or services (such as bulk e-mail lists)
- Dissemination of a particular opinion
- Validation of e-mail addresses to be sold on bulk e-mail lists. E-mail addresses that have been validated with a reply are more valuable than ones which have been gleaned from web pages and newsgroups. This is often the source of e-mail asking if your are some person the sender claims to know.
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| Tricks Used in Spam |
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Tricks that are used to avoid complaints: - Forging the "from" address so "remove" replies are sent to an invalid address and then bounced back to the sender
- Displaying a different "To" address in the message you see to make it look like the message was intended for someone else and delivered to you in error. That should not happen, since Internet mail delivery is actually quite reliable. You can find the actual "To" address and see how a message got to you by examining the message headers.
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Tricks that are used to avoid detection by spam filters: - Constantly changing the "from" address
- Altering the subject
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| How To (Try to) Avoid Spam |
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Here are some ways to try to avoid spam:- Do not reply to e-mail to "remove" your address from the list. In many cases, the e-mail address is forged, and will return an error message. If the address is legitimate, you will be letting the spammer know that your e-mail address is a valid one, and even if you are removed from that list, your address will probably be sold as a validated address.
- Opt-Out of Legitimate Lists
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Last updated: April 14, 2002
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