Newsletter #70 The Spam Onslaught

Created on 8/08/02

A special hello to all new subscribers.

The last newsletter (5th July, 2002) was "Viral Marketing Revisited" and can be found at http://www.netinsites.com/article3.cfm?ArticleID=96

This newsletter only goes to those who wish to receive it. Click on the link at the end of this article if you wish to remove yourself from the list.

We'd like to find out more about the information and services you want so we've set up a very simple survey that will take only Two Minutes to fill out. Plus we are giving away a US$50 voucher to use on Fishhead http://www.fishhead-gifts.com, a great gift site with a fantastic range of beautiful and original items that I'm sure you won't have seen before! Click on this link http://www.netinsites.com/survey.htm to take part in the survey (The number of subscribers to this newsletter is relatively small, in the hundreds, so you've got a good chance of winning!).

---

More than anything else, junk email is souring life on the Web.

On a normal day, Hotmail subscribers receive more than 1 billion pieces of spam email. In June, anti-spam filtering company Brightmail recorded 4.8 million spam attacks, each of which may include thousands or even millions of email containing the same pitch. That's a 600 percent increase from a year earlier.

But what is spam anyway?

My definition is this: 'unsolicited email that is not personalised in any way'. This would include email from organisations that you may have dealt with and who may have your email address but have never sought or obtained your permission. Included in this definition is what is called 'occupational spam' which is any email from a co-worker or business colleague that isn't necessary or urgent. The worst form of this type of spam is the "reply all" response that simply says, "Thanks!" or "I second that!"

So why is spam such a problem? If you are relatively new to the Internet you probably don't receive a great deal of spam and probably can't see what all the fuss is about. Also if you are in marketing or sales you might also wonder: What's the big deal you're just pushing a product or service? The reasons spam-haters give are:

• As a recent study by the European Union stated: "The history of the advertising industry shows that the lower the cost of a direct marketing technique the greater the risk of abuse". SpamCon founder Tom Geller has actually put numbers against the different types of unsolicited marketing methods and reckons that the sender only bears 0.01% of the cost of spam as against 91% for telemarketing and 88% for postal mail. For the full list go to this page: http://www.spamcon.org/about/news/newsletters/008/opinion.shtml.
  
  
• As more and more users filter their messages in an attempt to screen out the junk, more and more legitimate mail will be deleted by mistake. The use of permission email as a viable customer communications channel is being severely challenged, as legitimate mail gets lost in the flood. As someone who daily deletes spam in blocks of 20 or more, I know it's easy to miss something important.
  
  
• An often unrecognised cost is that associated with your ISP having to upgrade their network capability and hardware. Recently Brightmail estimated that 27% of all email could be classified as spam and because a significant portion of your ISP's costs are directly related to the amount of email transferred - you're paying for it.
  
  
• Porn spam is now 8% of all spam and doubling in the past year and may deter parents from allowing their children to have email accounts and use the Web. Although not a particularly funny issue you might enjoy a Dave Barry column that is related - Why Spam Beats Cafeteria Food http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/living/columnists/dave_barry/3651015.htm
  
  
• It wastes time even if you delete it without reading.

####################################################################################

DON'T FORGET OUR TWO MINUTE SURVEY! and the fact that we are giving away a US$50 voucher to use on Fishhead http://www.fishhead-gifts.com, a great gift site with a fantastic range of beautiful and original items that I'm sure you won't have seen before! Click on this link http://www.netinsites.com/survey.htm to take part in the survey.

####################################################################################

What can you do to reduce the effect of spam?

• Never read it. Most spam is very obvious and can be deleted without viewing. Be aware also that strange emails from people you don't know can also contain viruses, so why take the risk and waste your time?
  
  
• Definitely NEVER reply to it. Don't even try to unsubscribe as even if the spammer has a unsubscribe function that works, your email address is probably already spread far and wide anyway. Any responses to spam just confirm that your email address is a 'live' one.
  
  
• Set up a throwaway email address that you can check easily but can use in situations where an email address is required but you are not sure of the Website's pedigree.
  
  
• Think about whether you should show email addresses on your Website as software robots are constantly roaming the Net harvesting email addresses from sites. It's normally OK to have addresses showing on dynamic pages but in other situations consider using a form to hide your email address. This is of course a difficult one to weigh up as Web-based contact forms can make you a little less accessible.
  
  
• Consider filtering software that deletes spam based on blacklists or certain criteria. Many ISPs are now including the option of spam filters within their accounts. There are more and more offerings in this area and I am sure the range of products available will expand considerably over the next year.

Where are we heading in the Spam Wars, as spammers get more sophisticated and spam-haters get more hostile? Probably we will be driven to using digital identification technologies to establish 'whitelists' of approved senders - a little like how instant messaging buddy lists work.

But geez I reckon I'll miss spam like (my last four):

'Friend, impotence got you down?'
'Software to Secure Your Sensitive Files'
'Feedback on your company'
'Hello chay30 , come and see the ultimate FREE TEEN Site!'

NOT!

Alex Garden

---

Newbies

If you have trouble printing Webpages correctly it is probably because of the background color or image that the Web designer has set for the page. To turn off or turn on background printing in Internet Explorer 5 or 6, choose 'Tools', 'Internet Options'. When the dialog box opens, click the 'Advanced' tab. Scroll down to Printing and select/deselect the check box labelled "Print background colors and images". Click OK to close the dialog box and save your selection.

For previous tips visit http://www.netinsites.com/hottips.cfm

Power Users

For very quick access to your most-used Website, in Windows Explorer, go to C:\Windows\Favorites folder and find the site in your Favorites list. Right click on it and choose properties. Under the Internet Shortcut or Web Document folder tab, you'll see the site's address next to Target URL and next to Shortcut key you should see None. Replace 'None' with any desired letter you wish to make a hotkey and click OK - you may find that you can't delete 'None', just select the box and type the letter you want. You'll now need only to press Ctrl+Alt+ the letter that you designated. Make sure the hotkey is unique; that is, not in use by another application.

For previous Power Tips visit http://www.netinsites.com/hottips_power.cfm

---

At DeletedDomains.com http://www.deleteddomains.com/, you can search for free through a constantly updated pool of more than fifteen million newly available domain names that end in .com, .org or .net. The great thing about this database is that it shows the domains that are 'on hold' but not yet available to be registered by someone else. If you'd searched for it in the normal way it'd show as being unavailable. Normally domain registrars do not delete a domain, and therefore make it available, until a few weeks after it's expiry date - these domains are on hold. Worth a look if you're looking for a Web address.

Easy PDF is an inexpensive alternative to the Adobe Acrobat software as it lets you create Adobe Portable Document Format (PDF) documents. It is a true WYSIWYG editor with full drag and drop support and it includes an image editor for optimizing your images, supports hypertext and bookmarks and even includes a spell checker and document security. Documents formatted in PDF, can not only be downloaded via a link, but they can also be viewed directly from your website, without being downloaded. Cost is US$30 http://www.visagesoft.com/easypdf/

---

No new articles this month.

To search through all the articles in our online database just use the search function on any page of our Website http://www.netinsites.com

No new quotes.

You can see our other Quick Quotes on the front page http://www.netinsites.com; just refresh the page to see another one randomly selected from our database. Great for presentations or times when you want to appear to be a techno-dude(ss)!

---

To access previous newsletters visit our newsletter archive at http://www.netinsites.com/articles.cfm.

If you wish to subscribe to the email version, just send a blank email to subscribe@netinsites.com, or visit www.netinsites.com .

Best wishes

Alex Garden

Internet Strategy | Website Design | Website Promotion | Web Text Messaging | Email Newsletters | Online Sports Games | Content Management