Managing Spam
Spamming means flooding the Internet with many copies of the same message, in an attempt to force the message on people who would not otherwise choose to receive it. Most Spam is commercial advertising, often for dubious products, get-rich-quick schemes, or quasi-legal services. Spam costs the sender very little to send -- most of the costs are paid for by the recipient or the carriers rather than by the sender.
There are two main types of Spam, and they have different effects on Internet users. Cancellable Usenet Spam is a single message sent to 20 or more Usenet newsgroups. (Through long experience, Usenet users have found that any message posted to so many newsgroups is often not relevant to most or all of them.) Usenet Spam is aimed at "lurkers", people who read newsgroups but rarely or never post and give their address away. Usenet Spam robs users of the utility of the newsgroups by overwhelming them with a barrage of advertising or other irrelevant posts. Furthermore, Usenet Spam subverts the ability of system administrators and owners to manage the topics they accept on their systems.
Email Spam targets individual users with direct mail messages. Email Spam lists are often created by scanning Usenet postings, stealing Internet mailing lists, or searching the Web for addresses.
There is one cardinal rule to remember when dealing with spammers and rogue sites: Don't become an offender yourself.
Never-
- Threaten violence or vandalism;
- Mailbomb the site;
- Mailbomb the alleged spammer, who may be an innocent third party;
- Ping-storm or SYN-flood the site;
- Hack into the site;
- Try in any way to bring the site down illegally.
And above all else, don't use Spam to fight Spam. This also applies in Usenet - don't follow up to Spam postings, otherwise your postings may also become Spam.
Optus is combating this scourge with our Spam Filtering service, which is available free, with every Optus email address. You can activate Spam Filtering on your Optus email account here.