Like most folks I have several email addresses that I use for a variety of reasons. The one at the bottom of the column is for business and I have another that is for friends and family. There is another that is used for communicating with other Ford Mustangs folks and clubs and so on.
Imagine my surprise this week when what should appear in not one, not two, but three of my email accounts, but an email with my very own invitation to sign up for Congressman Tim Mahoney's e-Newsletter. I do appreciate that Tim sought me out from among all the folks that he could have sent it to. He wants my input (Martha, you and the computer guy must be important.) and I will do my best to offer what ever advice Tim doesn’t want to hear.
Tim’s email did get me to thinking however. How did he get three of my email addressees? Tim also wrote in the email invitation “But I need your permission first!” I assume this means permission to send me email. Confusion sets in when I think about the fact that apparently he doesn’t need my permission to send me email if it is asking for permission to send me ….. never mind! Tim, I do appreciate the invite, I will accept because it will probably be a great source of column material in the future.
But how do folks like Tim find out our email addresses. Let’s look at some places our email addresses are available. Think about the FREE greeting cards we like to send for birthdays, anniversaries etc. To send them we must provide our own email address and the email address of the recipient. Now the company has two valid email addresses to include on an email list that can be sold to bulk email companies. Another place to get email addresses is to send out hundreds of computer generated emails about Viagra or hot stocks and the emails that do not get kicked back as having a bad email address go on the list and sold to the next bulk emailer. Don’t forget, even signing up for Amazon or any online store that requires an email address puts us in a position for the address to be sold or used by an “affiliate partner.”
How much spam is there? Statistics, extrapolations and counting by Radicati Group from April 2010 estimate the number of emails sent per day (in 2010) to be around 294 billion. 294 billion messages per day means more than 2.8 million emails are sent every second and some 90 trillion emails are sent per year. Around 90% of these trillions of emails are spam and viruses.
What can we do? There are a few things that will slow it down but I don’t think it can be stopped. Here are some steps that might mitigate the onslaught of junk email. (Congressman Mahoney, yours are definitely not junk.) Try using a web based email such as Yahoo or MSN or Gmail. They all offer free email accounts and the spam filters they use are very effective. I use Yahoo and it catches about 95% of all spam.
Windows Live Mail is a client based program (resides on our computer) that includes a junk e-mail filter. The junk e-mail filter is a list of potential spammers, and other algorithms used to identify spam. This list is updated via Windows Updates so is constantly being populated with the latest anti spam tools. Bare in mind that spammers are working desperately to get around these filters and occasionally do. Those users out there still running Outlook Express may want to consider upgrading to Windows Live Mail just for the spam filters. WLM is part of a suite of products called Windows Live Essentials which is FREE from Microsoft and can be downloaded from http://windows.microsoft.com/en-US/windows-live/essentials-other-programs. There are several other products in the suite and we may choose one, some or all of the products to download but for our discussion today we concentrate on Windows Live Mail. As a side note, if using Outlook Express now, the installation of Windows Live Mail will automatically move our address book, and old emails into the new program so set up is fairly easy.
Other programs such as MS Outlook have built in junk filters that install updates from Microsoft to identify suspect email and move it to the Junk folders for later review. There are also third party software packages like Norton AntiSpam, Mailwasher Pro and McAfee Spamkiller that integrate with client based email programs and try to filter out spam before it gets to the mail program.
But some email like Congressman Mahoney’s we want to receive. So don’t be too restrictive when making up the rules for spam email. Send the congressman an email asking that the Can-Spam Act of 2003 be strengthened because it doesn’t seem to have accomplished much in the way of cutting down spam email. Wikipedia reports that according to Steve Ballmer, Microsoft founder Bill Gates receives four million emails per year, most of them spam. At the same time Jef Poskanzer, owner of the domain name acme.com, was receiving over one million spam emails per day.
Send me an email, I won’t block you!
More interesting tidbits like this can be found in my book, Grumbles from the Keyboard. I think the book may also resolve constipation based on comments from folks that have my book and report they keep it in the throne room and read it every day. Get your copy today!
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Grumbles From The Keyboard: How I Learned To Stop Worrying And Love My Computer (9781467985895): Courtland Nederveld: BooksAnd if you are a reader of different genres, why not order my cookbook as well. What you say? “A technogeek writing a cookbook, this I have to see. “ Well here it is!
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Epicuria: An Adventure That Really Cooks! (9781456561734): Court Nederveld: Books
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