What to do about SPAM

A few things you can do if you're on the victim's side

Protect yourself:

My main advice to individuals willing to reduce the amount of SPAM in their mail boxes is to install a mail filtrer based upon the technology of statistical bayesian filtering.

There are good examples in the download page (by far my preference goes to: K9).

Help us all:

First, find where the SPAM comes from. Some of them try to cover their E-mail tracks and ask for oral response usually either through phone or fax (occasionnaly through surface mail). Do not try anything while you're not sure of the e-mail identity of the spammer (many try to give you false tracks to common ISP like AOL, or Compuserve).

Send the appropriate "remove me from your list of addresses" message. Usually it's a simple message sent back with the subject line "REMOVE", or a specific address where to mail something similar. But this forces you to read the message to find the instructions... And it's not guaranteed to work (some Spammers take this as a confirmation that the address is operating).

Send a polite comment (a single one only) to the postmaster at the spammer's site. This asks for attentive and competent exploration of the headers of the mail message. But, it will often give you the satisfaction to find a good postmaster trying to help (tell me their names for my kudos list) and in some cases you will see closed accounts.

Ask your provider to set up an in-filtering tool. This would allow to remove all messages from certain users or certain domain names. Long term partial solution, but it could be helping a lot against most amateurs.

Ask your provider to set up an out-filtering tool. Most responsible ISPs should accept to block users mailing too many messages at the same time. Any other approach to reducing the risk of unfair users exploiting their machines to SPAM the world could be positive, too.

Under United States law, it is unlawful "to use any telephone facsimile machine, computer, or other device to send an unsolicited advertisement" to any "equipment which has the capacity (A) to transcribe text or images (or both) from an electronic signal received over a regular telephone line onto paper." The law allows individuals to sue the sender of such illegal "junk mail" for $500 per copy. Most states will permit such actions to be filed in Small Claims Court.

Call the 800# phone line (if there is one indicated) and tell them how annoyed you are by SPAM mail. Just remember two things: 1/ they're paying the phone bill, you can be long and detailed. 2/ don't go to harrassing length (it's prohibited).

A variation on the "Call the 800# phone line" idea: Call and tell you're interested, "just give me a minute while I get back to the credit card". You can start the chronometer to know how much time they can wait for a possible credit card order. I don't know whether it's legal or not, but I find this one very funny!

Don't buy from a Spammer. NEVER! And make clear tha you do not buy because they use SPAM.

If you're running a Unix box or something you can tweak a little, you may be able to send back fake messages telling that the mail account no longer exist. That may suggest an automatic removal from their list...

What to avoid about SPAM:

Some people have been trying the following "solutions". They may help or they may backfire too fast to be handled. Just for you to know! But I can't advise you to use these.

You can try filling the Spammer's mailbox with messages, UU-encoded images, FTP-by-mail results, etc. Beware! In several coutries this is illegal. Furthermore, most semi-pro and professionnal Spammers will not even notice that since they have set up filters to recognize that too many messages come from a single address or from specific addresses or that too big messages are sent.

You can try harrassing the Spammer (by mail, phone, fax, or other direct or indirect violence). Beware! In most countries (if not all), this is illegal.

Before the flood starts

To know how to avoid being put on address lists, you can also have a look at: To get removed from some SPAM lists

An example of what you can put in your mail message to the postmaster of the spammer

Please note the identity of one of your users who has sent the following unsolicited advertising email. This sending could be construed as a violation of federal telecommunications law. Please do not permit this abuse to happen again. Take appropriate action against this spammer, and repost your terms of service so other users are aware that behavior like this cannot be tolerated.

The quoted unsolicited email attack has been forwarded for the public's information, in the newsgroup "news.admin.net-abuse.email" and to the SPAM.Anti web page (for inclusion in the black lists).

A few things you can do if you're on the entrepreneur's side

If you're asking, that's a very positive thing. You're not lost yet. As a matter of fact, it is a simple problem with simple solutions. Promoting your activity on the Internet is calling for the same marketing efforts that you need on another media. You must know your customers and reach them as efficiently as possible.

So, here are a few tricks that I experimented myself (I'm also a software developer selling over the Internet and I have been selling contemporary art the same way). They're working, they're free. Read and use them!

Perfect your web site. It all begins here. Too many people forget about a finishing their web site before starting to promote it. The site must be attractive, easy to use and loading quickly. I also saw too many sites where www.mysite.com was working but not mysite.com. People typing the address in Netscape or IExplorer often ignore the www. prefix and a simple DNS declaration fix can solve this for you (and avoid those interested people to receive an error message instead of a sales message they are looking for).

Have a subscription feature. On the site, you can invite people to subscribe to your email publication. Those will be volunteers only. Don't forget it. The email is then sollicited (and furthemore, perfectly targetted - allowing an even more efficient message).

Use newsgroups. I did not say "go and spam newsgroups". But, you can easily spot the newsgroups where your potential customers gather. Participate to those talks/chats. Remember to cite your activity/service and/or web site when appropriate. Everybody will recognize an effort of information and you will reach hundreds to hundreds of thousands of potential customers with the same message.

You can also use the email lists in the same way. As for newsgroups, politeness and serviability are appreciated.

Add your web site to search engines. With a little work, you'll get a great return. Always check your "rating" according to the probable criterias of your customers (they do not look for your company name but for some common nouns describing your product). Adpat your site to increase these results. It's worth it.

Add your web site to web catalogs. Use the web lists of links, indexes and catalogs like Yahoo.

Use banners. I often hear that it is too expensive for small businesses. Just think about free banner exchange solutions. Dozens of them will give you a really low-cost access to millions of people. Just try http://www.doubleclick.net/, http://www.linkexchange.com/, http://www.bannerswap.com/ and maybe http://www.hyperbanner.net/.

Don't stick yourself in the web. Don't forget to think that specialized magazines (or mainstream ones) are interested to add a few interesting web sites to their "high tech" page. Internet is large but not all encompassing. There's a life out of the Internet.

Don't forget...

... that the consumer is not a blind fool. Call on his/her intelligence, you'll be greatly rewarded.

... that in all promotion means, you have to weight all sides (positive and negative). SPAM may easily draw you bad surprises far beyond the limits of what small entrepreneur may foresee in his/her worst nightmares. Responsible promotion can bring you a solid business with a neat growth rate.

... none of today's Internet success stories has been using SPAM as a promoting mean. That could mean something...

I wish you the success of Google, eBay, Amazon, Dell, Cisco.