Internet Defense Technologies

I know it seems almost unbelievable that this could be the case, but the reality is, Spammers are some of the most unscrupulous people and if you were to email them back that you wanted to be removed from their list it is almost positive that they will take that as a bona fide email and sell it in the top tier of verified emails addresses.

Spammers aren’t necessarily on the same terms as the rest of us. My 11-year-old daughter got on a Spam list and was sent pornography. Totally untraceable to its original source and when I went in the police station to lodge a complaint they told me there was absolutely nothing they could do about it.

If that same “Spam” was sent through the US Postal service that person would have committed a serious crime and would have been traceable because of the return address.

The surest measure against Spam is to stay of sites that will make you a Spam target and to have a really effective Spam solution.

Did you blind cc them????? If not, I would guess ALL your friends would call it spam!

There is nothing more annoying than having your email blasted to a bunch of people you don’t know and likely don’t want to know!

However, if you sent an email with a blind copy, you probably did okay and no, it isn’t really spam. At least most of your friends will think so, though there are bound to be a few who feel a little spammed.

Spam is technically classified as an unwanted, unsolicited email from a non recognizable source, in other words people emailing you and a massive number of other people who don’t know the emailer and never asked to be emailed.

Make sense?

You should check with your friends and see if they mind getting occasional blasts from you and anyone who does mind, take them off your list.  Then, stay away from the “cc” line on a mass email, it is just the more polite thing to do.

There is an email being sent around that looks like a legit UPS email, it is in fact bogus.

The subject line has this “UPS Tracking #” and then a bunch of numbers like: 6956309903 in it.

Below is the text of the email, if you receive this email do not open the attachment, it could have serious repercussions on your computer.

Dear Customers,

We were not able to deliver postal package you sent on the 10nd May in time because the recipient’s address is not correct.

Please print out the invoice copy attached and collect the package at our office.

Your personal manager: Bart Heller,
Customer Service: 1-800-CALL-UPS
Fax: 888-031-3813
Your UPS

Today, May 3, 1978, was the first time a Spam message was sent via the Internet.

On May 3, 1978, the first documented spam message was sent out to 393 people. It was then customary to only send an individual message via email to a singular end user.

Who could have imagined that the laziness of one individual would have spawned an entire empire of spam?

He wanted to let an entire community know of a new computer model available and rather than spending the entire night typing individual emails he decided he would send one email to 393 people, turn off his computer and be home for dinner and a scotch!

The man who sent the “spam” was given a reprimand for doing so, but that one publicized event spurred on ideas of money making in men less extraordinary and more motivated by the all mighty dollar.

Today the spam industry, yes folks, it is classified as an industry is responsible for estimates as high as 90% of all email sent in the world, has cost businesses and individuals countless billions in lost revenue and time
and many people, their life savings after having been scammed.

It is an interesting comment on the world’s affairs that a single, innocent, lazy, act could result in such a mass cultural abomination.

So, I guess the moral of the story is, don’t be lazy!

There are so many problems with service based internet issues today it’s a wonder anyone still emails! From Spam, to Malware, to Viruses, Phishing attempts and on and on it is a barrage of funk.

Imagine walking down the street and people yelling at you to buy this or try that or whatever other random comments real life Spam would consist of. Or if you went into a department store to buy something and no one was there to charge you for your purchases. I’d walk out and never go back!

As was recently announced Google’s Postini was shut down preventing many people from getting emails for hours and some for days.

Service support, per Tweets was nil. Which only adds to the irritation because if there is anything worse than having problems with internet and mail it is having problems with trying to resolve those problems!

There are REAL solutions to Spam and the host of other internet related filth out there!

Total Mail Defense (TMD) – not to be confused with Total Male Enhancement – is one of those providers!

I have had great success, uninterrupted, by using this service. There is no “Spam folder” to have to deal with, it is set up for real people who have real lives that don’t need extra work created by a “solution”.

It seems like a ridiculous question.

I didn’t know it was Spam.

It looked legitimate.

I thought it was from my aunt Gertrude.

I needed to lose weight and it looked promising.

The endless list goes on and on, but the truth is marketing. You were a recipient of well planned marketing. No matter what you think the reason you responded to the Spam was the reality is you were “hooked”!

The subject line or that is was from someone who looked familiar, whatever it was you took hold of the line. That is what marketing does. Good. Bad. Legal. Illegal. All the same, it hooks you.

Would you open the front door of your house to someone who maybe looked like someone you know? NO!

If you start looking at your email as a real life communication channel, like your front door, you would think twice and stay away from the curiosity that is often just bait for bigger troubles!

Our CTO and founder, Ron Edison, recently wrote an article for Business Solutions Magazine called Philosophies of Spam Solutions.  It is now being featured on their website and I wanted to give you an excerpt here:

While spam by the billions reaches out to users around the globe, they are scanned, blocked, deleted, sorted, filtered, rejected, quarantined, moved, dropped, replied to, and bounced by a panorama of spam solutions and email systems as varied as they are many. Accompanying the ubiquity of spam is a mixed bag of strategies and applications to deal with it.

And, while users rail at spam, they typically complain far louder about “false positives” (legitimate messages treated, blocked, etc., incorrectly by spam filtering systems) — and for good reason. If there’s anything worse than getting drowned in spam, many users agree, it is missing “that all important message”, which at least seemingly is often subject to collateral damage as servers wage their constant battle with spam. Here there is opportunity for an effective solution as long as it can deliver accuracy.

While spam and its effects have been the topic of endless discourse, rarely mentioned in much detail is the underlying philosophy or even exact goal of one solution or another. Certainly, one could say that — of course — the goal is to block all spam and deliver all “ham” (the colloquial for “legitimate email”), but there is more to this than meets the eye.

Enter “reputation.” (read more)

Reports are floating around that Verizon has sent out a “notice” to all of its customers.  The notice sets up a sort of backwards “opt-in” mechanism for sharing your private data.

It isn’ really an “opt-in” rather it’s a “negative opt-in”.  A negative opt-in is when you have to tell someone not to add you to the list and if you don’t tell them not to, you are agreeing to let them (and in this case Verizon) share your personal data.

Even, if like most people, you didn’t read the fine print and didn’t even realize that you were opting in to begin with, and had no idea that opting out was a possibility. Customers who get their bills online instead of in the mail don’t even get the notice.

Information Verizon may share includes what services you have purchased, your billing, technical, and location information. Information can be shared with “affiliates, agents and parent companies.” That’s not very reassuring. “Affiliate” in particular is a very fuzzy term, and usually means any marketer who has signed up with a program and paid a fee.

So, most likely you are about to get spammed by Verizon’s affiliates if you haven’t already.

Every ISP (Internet Service Provider) has their own rules and procedures.

The industry standard is generally thought to be that ISPs will block a sender IP address (an Internet Protocol address, which is a numerical identification that is assigned to devices participating in a computer network utilizing the protocol for communication between its computer) if it gets 1 complaint out of about 1,000 emails sent.

So, if you are getting spam, definitely report it.

Unfortunately serious spammers (of the viagra and fake watch variety) don’t send from one constant IP address. They vary it often and make it otherwise very hard to spot them, so reporting may not stop it.

The people who do use a constant IP address are generally from a real company and either don’t know better or thought they were some how above it (they did have a box you checked which said they could spam, I mean email you).

For those who are sending these emails.  Make sure people want what you are sending and you are sending what you said you would.  If you are using an old list, some of your subscribers may have forgotten about you or their email addresses may no longer be valid. There are even some subscribers who just use the complaint (”mark as spam”) button when they want to get off of a list because it is more convenient than the unsubscribe link.

So, put the unsubscribe link at the top and the bottom so that people will do that before they hit the report spam buton.

I have done this myself and sometimes feel like I am spamming my friends.  It isn’t that many names, but it still feels generic enough that i wonder.

The definition of spam per the Encarta dictionary is “an unsolicited, often commercial, message transmitted through the Internet as a mass mailing to a large number of recipients”.  So did all your friends opt-in to your mailings and want it?

Usually your friends have not, and some of them don’t want your bulk email, I am sure they even joke that you are spamming them.

So, what should you do?

Don’t spam them.

If you have something you want to tell your friends, send them an email, each one, one at a time.  If it is important enough for you to send them an individual email you will and they will appreciate it.

If it is too much work and not worth it to send them each an individual email, it was probably friend spam.