12:03 - Wednesday, Jan. 24, 2007
Let's Fight Spammers Together!
I mentioned a couple of entries back I was so sick of getting so much spam & so many crazy amounts of forwards etc. so we've changed our email address & sent this out to our address book hoping it helps. I thought I would post it here too. Maybe if we all try, together we can clean up the email world! :-)
I hope that you will take the time to read the following, to not only help us from getting junk mail, which also can be viruses etc., but to protect yourselves from the same. I know most of you know this already, but I thought it best to send to everyone in our address book, it couldn’t hurt and we’re sending this to all of you anyway to give you our new address.
Spam starts in your email by 4 basic ways:
1. Going onto websites and signing up for whatever and adding your email address. Dependent upon the security and other policies of the website they can sell or share you email address with whomever they want, hence you get Spam. Check privacy policies before adding your information. Also, you can better avoid by setting up a 'disposal' address such as yahoo or hotmail. Another way you can avoid, is if you need to add your regular email address, if the field will take it, type it in 'human form', for example lilmisskewl at diaryland dot ca).
2. People sending and forwarding emails without using the Blind Carbon Copy (bcc) function as well not removing the addresses within the email that were previously forwarded. Your email address gets forwarded on and on and on, eventually it goes to someone someplace and the Spam starts. This is not an intentional thing, it is just people not knowing or thinking about it when they do it.
3. Companies use automated emailing programs and that search for hits (active email addresses), sending out thousands of emails to random address combinations hoping to get a hit (an actual active email address), and eventually they do, then the spamming starts to flood the active email addresses. If you have your "Auto Preview Pane" activated in your email software (e.g. Outlook/Outlook Express) "Spammers" are notified by their software that the email was opened & is in fact an actual live working email. I have mine deactivated, so I have to double click on the email to actually open it.
4. By hand filling out some contest form or something of that nature and filling in your email address, now some business or goodness knows who has your email address.
SPAM is the same as an annoying telephone solicitor.
You begin to dread opening your email...
If you forward an email it only takes a second to clear up the previous forwards. You have to be in reply or forward mode in order to be able to edit the email and remove the prior forwards and thus removing the prior email addresses. Please take the time to clear them up and stop the cycle of Spam.
The blind carbon copy function may not initially appear when you create or forward an email; however, when you are in reply or forward mode and you then click on the "To:" function your address book will appear and so will the 'bcc' function blind carbon copy. Select the address(es) you wish to send to and click 'bcc'. When you use this function the people receiving it will not be able to see the addresses and it will only read 'undisclosed recipients'. This is a very easy function and a great way to help stop the cycle of endless Spam. As well it stops the spread of possible Trojans and other malicious viruses that are out there that spammers can send which can be devastating to a PC system and cost a user a lot of $$$ to fix.
Please edit forwarded email and use blind carbon copy when emailing. Protect your email address and those of your family, friends and co-workers.
There is nothing good about SPAM and nothing good about malicious computer viruses.
If we all take the time to follow the above steps, all of our PCs will be safer and emailing will be a lot more pleasant.
Please do not be offended by this comment; but in the interest of protecting ourselves and those we email to, I would ask that if you choose not to clear up forwards or use the blind carbon copy function, please refrain from sending us any forwards, no matter how cute, hilarious or interesting they might be. If it continues on after a period of time, we may have no choice but to block addresses from being able to send to us any longer. We really don’t want to have to do that.
Also, we do not add our names to the petition lists and forward them on, no matter how sincere & sad the story might seem. Most times these (if at all even true) are very old & have been passed on so much would not help the cause anyway. More often than not though, these are hoaxes and just another way to have our addresses forwarded around. So just so you know, if we receive these emails, they get deleted without our participation.
We do love the luxury of the communication we have with all of you by email; I am really not sure what I ever did without it, really! But I would like to make it a fun & happy thing once again & not an annoying one that just causes us problems. Looks like our next step is going to have to be a new computer! So keep in touch, we love to hear from you! Personal emails about YOU (and pictures too) are our favorites! Forwards of jokes, pictures, stories etc can be fun too, but we’re finding we are running out of time to keep up on them. Right now we have over 90 unread emails that are all that type of thing that we’ll try to get to eventually, but it is getting quite overwhelming. I hope that you can all try to keep them to a happy medium, (not too little, but not too much!) and only send us the ones that really made you think of us, "Lilmisskewl would really love this one", and not the ones that people send because they are going to win the lottery or have good luck tomorrow at 4pm if they do, or just for the sake of forwarding, if you know what I mean. ;)
Thanks so much for taking the time to read this. I hope we can all do something to make the PC world a happier SPAM FREE place! ;)
And as a close friend has taught me… "Only YOU can prevent forest fires!" (And no, it wasn’t Smokey the Bear.)
