[TCARC-NTx] Stopping Spammers

[David Johnson]

This isn't directly amateur radio related, but it is related to our club and
our reflector provider who also provides our web site.

Spammers on the Internet are just like CBers illegally using Ham
frequencies.  Plus they are costing you and everyone money whether you know
it or not.  Because of SPAMMERS your ISP has to pay more to fight SPAM, your
government has to use your tax dollars to fight spam, and every business and
individual in the United States is effected at least to a small degree, but
often to a very badly large degree.

Spammers continue to inundate the reflector.  You don't see it, because I
have set the reflector to only let email through from members of the
reflector.  I see tons of it daily.  SPAM is slowing down the reflector
servers, and web server response time because of the bandwidth it takes.

Spammers are thieves.  They are taking the resources you and I pay for and
stealing it for their own advertising at no extra cost to themselves, even
taking up space on your computer with out your permission.  Here are some
very specific things you can do to reduce spam.

Be sure you understand what SPAM is.  It is Unsolicited Commercial Email.
That means you never told them in anyway, nor any of their partners, that
they could send you email.  If you ever filled out a form saying that they
could allow their partners to send you special offers, and you receive stuff
from their partners...it is NOT SPAM.  You need to revoke the permission by
going back to the source and unsubscribing if you want off that mail list.

1) Boycott any product or service offered by SPAM.
2) Don't publish your email address on a web page or in a newsgroup.  There
are special software and millions of people out there surfing all over the
web to harvest email addresses just like yours.
3) Do not give your email address to any website unless they specifically
promise that they won't sell it or give it away.
4) Do not accept any so called free offers of information or access in
exchange for your email address.
5) Contact your government officials and encourage them to please outlaw
SPAM like other States have, such as the State of Washington.
6) Never ever reply to a SPAM, and never click on a link in a SPAM.  This
confirms your address and they sell your address further and for more money
because it is confirmed.  Do not use their UNSUBSCRIBE feature...it is a
trick to get you to confirm your email address.  You will get MORE SPAM if
you do.
7) sign up for an antispam effort, such as the free http://www.spamcop.net
service.  You can then forward your spam to the special email address that
they give you, along with the headers, and they will identify the real
source of the spam.  They'll send you a link to go to, so you can push the
"send spam report" button which will clue everyone in the spam chain to stop
spamming, and could cause the spammer to get deleted or filtered out of the
internet.  Very effective, yes sirree.  I have used it and gotten at least 8
spammers booted off their ISP in the last 5 days.  8 spammers can send
millions of messages and cause major bottlenecks world wide.  True, they
might crop up somewhere else, but at least you slowed them down.  Not only
that, but spammers find unsecured servers to borrow without
permission...that's called stealing...and spamcop notifies those server
owners to lock up their servers to stop being victims of theft.  Closing the
unsecure servers is a most excellent way to reduce SPAM, as well as many
other types of theft and internet vandalism.

If you need help with this, let me know.







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