Not-So Lovely Spam

Spam and Ways to Can it

by Rupert Sharp
of http://www.oyster-web.co.uk

Last updated: 17 Sep 2007

If you don't know what Spam is you haven't got the Internet, from message boards to email inboxes there is no escape from the plague of evil people whose sole job it is to annoy us. Every time you sign up for something whether it be to a newsletter, website or online game that you're not positive is trustworthy there is almost always a risk of getting free holidays when you spend £30 or more at BuyOurStuff.com. Spam extends to even phone lines but it is far more common on the WWW.

The two main forms of Spam at the moment are obviously the ever present 'Email Spam' and highly irritating 'Comment Spam'. Email spam as said above can be contracted by signing up to websites and letters etc. but one of the main causes of spam is one that a lot of people overlook, simply displaying your email. The second you write your email up on your website or another website for that matter you're basically putting the noose around your neck, spam-talking obviously. Automated bots crawl through websites picking up whatever emails they can get their filthy hands on and fling rubbish into your inbox like there is no tomorrow, because of 'profile sites' such as Myspace and Bebo taking off more and more people give out their personal details without giving a second thought to it but this of course is spam-fatal. It is not beyond imagination that a Myspace oriented Bot that takes your details and throws out spam that it 'thinks' you'll be interested in could be designed to terrorize the net community. There is a way of protecting your email address that we provide at Oyster Web just type your email into our free email encrypter and you will receive a code to put in your website, profile, etc. that is exceptionally difficult for automated spammers to access. Although that will help, just remember not all spammers are lights and clockwork, human spammers can still access your email but unfortunately there is no real way to stop this directly apart from possibly installing a spam filter such as Mailwasher, but of course no system is perfect.

Comment spam is just as evil and sometimes worse than email spam, comment spam is basically spam that is put on forums, message boards or profile sites. These unwanted comments often repeat themselves taking up large amounts of page space and irritating the lunch meat out of everyone, not only does it ruin whatever discussion you where trying to have but it ends up returning later to do more damage. There is a way of getting round this problem as well and it is by installing a 'letter box' on your forum etc. which has a randomly generated image with characters in it that the user must type out to either sign up or place a comment; this stops them right in their tracks because a spam bot finds it difficult to read an image without specialized software to do so. Of course those pesky humans can still get past this but I guess you can always remove them by use of an admin system but it's still a pain in the neck.

Spam is an unavoidable downside to the net which I'm sure we'll be dealing with until there's no more computers left but we can still try to repel it as much as possible, so just be careful where you stick your email next time :-)