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Handling Spam: Responding

By: Richard Lowe

Article Word Count: 420 words  [Comments (0)]
Total Views: 84 Views





Most spam messages will include a link at the bottom which


states something like "to remove yourself from the list click


here ...". On the surface this seems innocent enough, but if you


do respond you are potentially increasing the amount of spam


that you receive by many times.





Wait a minute. You mean you ask to be removed and instead not


only are you not removed but you will get more spam than ever?


How can that be so? To understand why you must first understand


how spamming works. You see, spammers operate by getting


zillions and zillions of email addresses however they can.





Sometimes they purchase CD collections of "15 million clean


email addresses" or "5 million email addresses" for some small


amount of money. I've seen these collections as cheap as $9.95


(one wonders how clean these collections are).





Another common tactic is to use spiders to scan thousands of web


pages for email addresses. These addresses are then added to a


database which is then sold or used.





And sometimes the spammers just pick a domain and send their


spam to a variety of possible email addresses at that domain.


They just pick a domain and use a dictionary of names and send


every one of those names to the domain. Those that generate a


bounced (error) message are deleted from the list.





So you see, the spammer begins with a list of email addresses


which are not validated. They are simply known to not have


returned a bounce message (an error indicating an email account


did not exist). However, what is not known is that a human being


is actually reading the mail from that mailbox.





The problem with responding is that you validate for the spammer


that a human exists at that email address. This increases the


value of your email address by many times. A smart spammer can


actually sell these verified addresses to collections of "clean"


lists.





Of course if you actually buy something from the spammer you've


increased the value of your email address to astronomical


levels. In this case, you may find yourself added to countless


"sucker" lists, receiving countless offers from the most obscure


places.


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