Internet Defense Technology

It seems that whenever you buy something on the Internet this leads to more email spam in your mailbox.

However, a lot of legitimate companies are starting to recognize that selling your email address to someone or even spamming them themselves without your consent gets them in trouble.

However instead of being very overt and forthcoming about getting your consent they are being subtle and many people miss the opportunity to say no because it is so hidden.

Whenever you buy something on-line read the entirety of all the pages of the checkout process. Especially look for a little title checkbox that is you either have to check to not be on their mailing list or uncheck. Sometimes there is more than one:

I get asked this a lot too and did a an early post called How Many People Actually Buy Something from Spam? which covers this subject.

Basically this is a conversion problem.

Say the spammers send out ten thousands (not uncommon number, sometimes more) spam messages and out of that say two people click through and they make money off of them. That is 0.0002% and they made money off of it.

Simple math and a little scary that it doesn’t take that much unfortunately.

That is why we at IDT feel it is so important to push education out. That way the spammers stop making money and stop spamming (hopefully).

I get asked often how someone can not be marked as spam when trying to market.

There are two main things you have to do:

1) Only email people who actually want your information. The best way is to get people to sign up for your list with a double opt-in (they have to check a box that says yes and then you send them an email they can respond to in order to be on the list).

Part of this is then DO NOT sell or give their email address to anyone or use it for anything else but what they signed up for.

2) Get these people to add your email address to their “whitelist”. You are going to have to walk most people through this step as many people won’t know how. But if you can get them to do this, they will get every email you send them.

Final note is if anyone ever asks to be off the list, IMMEDIATELY do so and don’t send them even one more email.

So, you are getting lots of email spam, how to stop it?

I have heard stories of people think that they can unsubscribe to it all and just wanted to cover this subject in brief:

1) Emails You Subscribed To

If at some point you signed up for an email that you no longer want, it is perfectly safe to unsubscribe to this. At the top or bottom of the email will be a link for you to click on, go ahead and do this and you will be all good.

2) Junk You Didn’t Subscribe To

If you find you are getting emails that are totally random and have no connection to anything you subscribed or bought, unfortunately these are the ones you shouldn’t try to unsubscribe to.

For the most part someone got your email address by purchasing it from someone else or in some cases even guessed (see my earlier blog post on How Did the Spammer Get My Address?).

If they guessed it, when you respond in anyway, they now know they have a good email address they can sell to others. For the most part any response (even an unsubscribe) will just get you on more email spam lists.

3) Newsletters You Didn’t Subscribe To

In some cases you might get something that looks like a newsletter which looks pretty legit.

If somewhere at the top it says something like “You are getting this email for” and then such and such a reason, it is pretty safe to try and unsubscribe. You probably “accidentally” subscribed to it when you purchased something.

Go ahead and click the link to unsubscribe similar to #1 above.

Summary

Unfortunately rules are only followed by people who were already following the rules. The more criminal types aren’t going to follow the rules no matter what they are.

It is best to get a good spam filter (like ours, you didn’t expect me to not mention it, did you).

Saw this great PDF from a company that “helps” people do email marketing.

It is nice to see that not all people who are doing email marketing are trying to spam (or at least are trying to reduce spam).

If you are doing email marketing, helping your clients do email marketing or in anyway involved, you should definitely check this out:

Download PDF now

Article from Ron Edison, Founder and CTO of Internet Defense Technology

What you should do to deliver legitimate email (please don’t spam people)?

The main key being it isn’t spam. It is something the people really want, the double opted in for it and what you are sending them is what they asked for exactly. Additionally:

• Some providers support various technologies that may be able to help you including SPF and DomainKeys. Such technologies have various drawbacks and some disagree that they are useful but here they can very well help a great deal. They essentially provide a way for the recipient’s mail server to validate that your system is authorized to send mail from your domain. Here are some links: http://www.openspf.org/ and http://www.dkim.org/
• Analyze your messages using as many different systems as possible. If you use a bulk email provider such as Constant Contact or something similar, they may be able to assist.
• Consider using or at least testing out an outsourced email service such as Total Mail Defense (http://www.internetdefensetechnologies.com/) — this allows you to send email back to yourself and review the spam analysis of the message that will help prevent your messages from being classified as spam based on content and other factors. This will also give you an idea of some of the tech in play in this areal.
• Ensure you follow the various laws as well as policies in place by anti spam organizations such as spamhaus (http://www.spamhaus.org/).
• Ensure your system detects bounced message and what type and stops sending to recipients that don’t accept your email. Continuing to attempt delivery to non existent addresses can result in your mail servers being blacklisted.
• Get assistance from someone who really understands this field. It has changed greatly in recent years due to many different types of technologies and methods used to attempt to cut down on spam.

You can be pretty sure you are looking at spam if the subject line includes any of the following:

• The word “free”
• The word “viagra”
• The words “you won”
• The word “lottery”
• The word “[Subject]” - sometimes it is () around the word or other symbols
• Any mention of prescription drugs
• Any mention of cheap watches
• Any mention of cheap jewelry
• Any mention of body parts
• Anything of a sexual or explicit nature
• Words with numbers of funny characters in the middle of the word, like “V1agra”

I have gotten asked why someone sending email would put a number of funny character in the middle of a word on the subject line.

This is an attempt to get passed the spam filter. Spammers know that some spam filters mainly look at keywords. So if the program is looking for “viagra” then it will miss “v1agra”.

Of course, there is spam that doesn’t fall into one of the above as well, so you can’t just use the above rules. Our Total Mail Defense spam filter looks at much more than keywords, so we catch all these attempts too.

Want more survey results for my Email Spam Survey, will only take a few minutes if you don’t mind.

I hate these types of services, I am a real person and find this annoying:

“This is an automatic confirmation request from <***@******.com>;.

“In an effort to fight spam, I have asked my email host, Big Giant Media, Inc., to install a spam filter on my mailbox. To prove that you are a real person and not an automated spammer, please visit the following URL and enter the code you see displayed on the Big Giant Media authentication page:

“http://******

“HINT: If you cannot reach the page by clicking on the link above, please copy and paste it directly into your browser’s address bar.

“You will only need to do this the first time you send an email to my address. Once you have confirmed your status, you will be added to a list of approved senders and will not be required to complete this step again.

“Thanks for helping me stamp out spam!”

Why not just get a system like Internet Defense Technology which can find the spam on it’s own instead of annoying your friends and people who try to email you?

Original article on IDT Blog about email spam

I have on occasion gotten an “out of office” message from someone, usually not a close friends, but some business contact.

While I appreciate the answer, there is some risk in doing this.

There are spammers who specifically send out messages with just one line of garbage in it. While you may feel it is just a mistake if you have ever gotten one, I am sure they are doing it for a good reason:

For every email that doesn’t bounce back to them, they know they have a good email address. They are doubly sure of this if they get an “out of office” message in response to their spam.

Here is what I would do instead of an “out of office” message:

1) send out a email to your list (don’t spam) telling all your contacts you are going out of town

2) ask a co-worker to check through your email regularly and answer any legitimate inquiries with an “out of office” message.

3) set up remote access to your email and check it once every few days

Small thing, but might keep you off more spam sending lists.

Original article on IDT Blog about email spam