Avoiding More Spam Emails
Below is a note I recently sent out to a bunch of my friends and acquaintances regarding how they can slow the growth of spam in their email inbox. Although it’s off-topic, I’m sharing it because you may find it useful to know what kind of people are out there manipulating and taking advantage of your urge to share things with those you care about.
Here’s a hint that may help you avoid receiving more spam.
In the past, maybe you’ve received one of those wonderfully inspiring stories by email that urges you to forward it on to all your friends. And maybe you’ve even forwarded one or two of them to me.
If you have, please know this – I won’t forward them on. Ever.
Anytime you see one of those “forward this” emails, it almost always has an email tracker program attached that tracks the email addresses of those folks you forward to.
The original sender (generally a cold-blooded spammer, not a warm-hearted humanitarian) is getting a copy each time that mail of his gets forwarded, and so is able to build huge lists of “active and valid” email addresses to which he then sends torrents of SPAM messages.
If you’ve been forwarding lots of those messages, now you know why you’re getting so much SPAM.
Do yourself a favor and stop forwarding those things, no matter how cute, or lovely, or inspiring you think they are. They’re just poison bait – a scam. Of course, you can’t undo all the harm you’ve already done yourself (and the friends you’ve forwarded to). But you can avoid making it any worse.
And for god’s sake, don’t forward any of that stuff to me. Inspiration like that I don’t need.
Thanks a million.
Cheers from warm and smiling Thailand,
Charles
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Thanks Charles, that is some useful information I was unaware of.
Too Blessed to be Stressed, Jeff
Sorry, I disagree. I’m not sure that they can track mails beyond the first or second generation – i.e. they send the spam out with tracking code and it gets opened by some. But then someone is set to receive only text emails, and that tracking code becomes useless.
However,
when jokes, anecdotes, training materials, whatever; are forwarded onwards, ALL addresses should be placed in BCC so that no one else can see them, and therefore no one else can send spam to those addresses.
And all the previous recipients, showing in the message body should be REMOVED from every forwarded email. It is to easy with certain software to run through a bunch of emails and extract all email addresses, but we can make it harder for the determined spammer to obtain those addresses, by removing addresses (though if need be, names alone can be left.)
Michael,
You may be right. I did get the info from a very tech-savvy guy, however, who swore it happens that way.
Your advice about never placing addresses in the Carbon Copy line, and instead using Blind Carbon Copy is very good advice. It’s incredible how many emails I receive with dozens, even hundreds of email addresses wide open for anybody to see. This means that if someone mails to their entire list of friends, and you’re among them, your email is on that list, and nothing could stop anybody from emailing to every name that’s included.
Unfortunately, I know a great many people who wouldn’t know a BCC from birdshit. Such is our modern technoworld… we’re all in this together, but with unequal skillsets. Somebody else’s ignorance can place your privacy or mine at risk and they never even know it. It’s not good, but there it is.
And to anybody reading this who DOESN’T know what the BCC (blind carbon copy) is all about, please take a couple of minutes to read your email’s help file. Or Google it. You could be screwing everybody you forward to.