All About Spam
by Elena Fawkner
Spam. It's the
bane of anyone who conducts business online. It's becoming such a
major headache that law-makers the world over are struggling to
legislate it out of existence, alas without much success. For the time
being at least, it's here to stay, so let's take a look at the dreaded
stuff -- what it is, what it isn't, what you can do about it and how to
avoid doing it yourself.
What It Is
What it is, is the
registered trademark of the Hormel Foods Corporation (see
http://www.spam.com
). It's canned meat, very popular with the military so I understand.
Purists, however,
will tell you that, in the Internet context, spam is either a single
article posted repeatedly to large number of Usenet newsgroups or email
sent to a large number of addresses. In its previous incarnation, for an
email to be spam it had to be sent in large quantities. That was the
key
characteristic. Now, of course, the definition has broadened and the
focus has shifted from one of quantity or volume to recipient-consent,
more particularly the lack thereof, regardless of the number of
recipients.
The term "spam"
comes from a famous Monty Python sketch. As explained by Hormel
Foods itself: "Use of the term "SPAM" [in the Internet context] was
adopted as a result of the Monty Python skit in which a group of Vikings
sang a chorus of "SPAM, SPAM, SPAM ..." in an increasing crescendo,
drowning out other conversation.
Hence, the analogy
applied because UCE [unsolicited commercial email] was drowning out
normal discourse on the Internet." For the rest of spam.com's
interesting position statement on the use of its trademark in this
fashion, see
http://www.spam.com/legal/spam/.
A good spam
analogy is the unsolicited telemarketing calls that invariably come when
you're in the middle of dinner. The difference between spammers and
telemarketers, however, is that telemarketers don't have the gall to
expect you to pay to receive the call (other than in terms of your
time). The spammer, on the other hand, does indeed have the gall, and in
spades.
The generally
accepted current definition of spam encompasses five categories of
email.
1. Unsolicited
ads sent via email to any number of recipients (even one). Some
people would not agree with this definition on the grounds that if
it's only sent to one (or only a few), then it is not sent in
sufficient quantity to qualify as spam. Personally, I don't
give a flying fig how many OTHER people are receiving the same
rubbish, I only care that I am.
2. Unsolicited
bulk mailing, regardless of its nature. This would include bulk
mailing of the latest round of dumb blonde jokes, not just
commercial advertising material. Again, I don't really care what
kind of rubbish it is, only that it is rubbish and it's landed in my
inbox.
3. Off-topic
postings to mailing lists, newsgroups or other forums. I would agree
with this definition where the off-topic posting was commercial in
nature, frivolous (such as jokes) or completely irrelevant (such as
religious sermonizing to a completely disinterested group) but
wouldn't consider it spam if, for example, someone belonging to and
regularly contributing to a mailing list related to cats posted an
"off topic" message with a question about their sick dog.
4. Using
mailing lists or newsgroups in a manner outside the volume or
frequency its readers signed up for. It's one thing to sign up for
an ezine, it's quite another to be bombarded with the ezine owner's
advertising messages three times a day, every day.
5. Adding
someone to a mailing list without consent and requiring them to
opt-out. This is particularly annoying. Not only has someone had the
temerity to arbitrarily add you to their list without your consent,
they require YOU to take a positive step to get off it!
I would add a
sixth category, and if you're an ezine publisher you'll know
*exactly* what I'm talking about:
6. Signing up
for an ezine using an autoresponder address so that the ezine
publisher receives your advertising every time they send the ezine
that you signed up for.
Whether you agree
with the above definitions or not, they all have one common thread ...
whether the recipient consented to receive the mail.
That's a good rule
of thumb and you won't go far wrong in your business mailings if you ask
yourself this question every time before you send a message: did the
recipients (and each and every one of them) consent, in some form, to
receiving this mail? Now, obviously, not every one on your list has
specifically emailed you and asked to be added to your mailing list.
For example, most
list members will have subscribed themselves to your ezine by completing
a form at your site, or website visitors will have indicated consent to
receiving updates about your site by supplying their email address when
submitting a survey that clearly stated that by submitting their email
address they consent to receiving email from you from time to time.
And NO, for our
purposes, it doesn't change the character of a spam email to include
removal instructions. It's spam when it's sent to someone who didn't in
some way ask to receive it. The wrong is in the *sending*.
Period.
You've no doubt
been the recipient of (way too much) email that starts out "This is not
spam [just love these]. This message is being sent in compliance with
H.R. Bill 12345 which states that the sender of an email cannot be
prosecuted for sending unsolicited commercial email if the email
contains remove instructions."
In the first
place, to the best of my knowledge, such a bill has not yet passed into
law (although several do finally appear to be close to proclamation). In
the second place, the provisions of such legislation will be relevant to
whether the transmission of the email concerned is *lawful*.
The issue of spam
as it relates to you and me and our online businesses is about more than
whether it is lawful. It is about whether it is good business practice
to make the recipients of your advertising bear the cost of your sending
it without asking you to do so in the first place.
Whether it's
lawful or not, it's just NOT good business practice and people have
every *right* to object to paying ISP fees for the privilege of
receiving junk mail.
What It Isn't
Bulk
email sent to an opt-in list is not spam. What's opt-in? Simply,
it means that the recipients "opted" to receive email from you by taking
some positive step such as providing an email address for that purpose,
or by confirming they wished to subscribe to an ezine (or, in the case
some third party subscribed them without their knowledge, failing to
unsubscribe themselves) when the publisher sends an acknowledgement of
subscription including unsubscribe instructions in case the person had
been subscribed by a third party.
Just because it's
sent in bulk doesn't make it spam (under the currently accepted
definitions). I publish an ezine each week and send it to my opt-in list
of several thousand people. That's not spamming because, to the best of
my knowledge, each person on my list signed up to receive it.
The fact that
several people on my list may have been signed up by malicious third
parties as part of a concerted mailbomb attack (with the intent that the
recipient be flooded with mail from all quarters) doesn't make ME a
spammer unless I know that the person didn't subscribe, wanted to be
removed and I failed to remove them ONCE they gave me the correct email
address used to subscribe them! To protect yourself from this type of
complaint, see "How to Be Sure You're Not Doing It" below.
Whether it's
spamming to send email to someone just because they've emailed you first
is a gray area. Some people staunchly maintain that they're free to
email you anything without fear of being guilty of spamming if you send
them anything first. Personally, I don't subscribe to this theory. If I
subscribe to your ezine, I don't think that entitles me to bombard you
with my advertising.
On this view, it
follows that those "subscribers" who have signed up to my ezine using an
autoresponder address that sends an ad in response to mailings of the
ezine, are spamming. (And if I can be bothered one day when I'm very,
very bored to find out who you are, you'll be booted from here to
Kingdom come.)
By the same token,
how is one to initiate a business transaction if no-one can make the
first move? I receive, on a fairly regular basis, email from people
wanting to do business with me. These emails are, without question,
commercial solicitations -- they're making me a business proposal.
Spamming? Not in my book.
If someone takes
the time and trouble to select my site or me as a prospective business
partner, they'll get a considered response. But send the same message to
1,000 of us (such as an invitation to participate in your new affiliate
program) and you've just crossed the line. Where that fine line is
is not easy to determine. It's easy to say from the edges what's
spamming and what isn't but the closer you get to that fine line in the
middle, the blurrier it becomes.
How To Reduce It
So, now that you
know what spam is, how do you reduce it?
The first way is
using spam filters. These are the equivalent of caller ID to weed out
the telemarketers (all those "unknown caller" calls you get).
Three spam filters
recommended by the authoritative zdnet.com (http://www.zdnet.com) are
Novasoft's SpamKiller which filters email against an extensive listing
of known spammers, subjects and headers (free trial, thereafter $29.95
to buy); Contact Plus' SpamBuster which comes with an editable list of
15,000 spammers (free trial, there after $19.95 to buy); and Fundi
Software's Mail Guard which previews messages and blocks those from
defined sources at the source (free to try, $20 to buy).
In addition to
these commercially available spam filters, your existing email program
already probably provides a filter function. These built-in filters can
normally be set up to filter emails with particular words or characters
in the subject line (such as $$$$$, FREE!!!!) as well as emails without
your email address in the "To:" field. Make sure to make a list of
ezines and mailing lists you are a member of before finalizing your
filters though, otherwise you'll delete everything without your email
address in the header.
An
often-recommended (but, as I will explain, dubious) strategy is to
protect your email address from harvesting by putting in some
obviously-to-be-removed characters in your email address where it
appears in the "From" field, for example, yourname@isp.nospam.com . The
theory is that a human (as distinct from a spammer's email-addressharvesting
robot) wanting to respond to your email will know enough to delete the "nospam."
part of the address. In theory that's all very well.
In my experience
though, there are plenty of people out there who are clueless when it
comes to this sort of technicality (many of whom are your prospective
customers) and will not understand what's going on when their mail to
you keeps bouncing. A VERY good way to lose prospective customers.
NEVER NEVER NEVER
respond to spam or act on the "remove" address. At best the address
probably won't work. At worst, you'll confirm to the spammer that
your address is valid and mail to it is being read. The result of which,
of course, is more of the same.
Use a separate
email address when posting to newsgroups and mailing lists since these
are rich sources of email addresses for spammer-harvesters.
Spend all your
time hunting down spammers and prosecuting them to the fullest extent of
the law. There is NO END of resources devoted to that very subject.
There are people out there, I kid you not, who have made it their life's
work to track down the source of every single piece of unsolicited email
they receive. You too can join this most worthy cause.
Of course, you
will put yourself out of business in the process because instead of
spending your time on productive business activities you're spending it
tracking down the source of all of your spam email. But, of course, if
you put yourself out of business you will no longer need an email
address and need never bother with spam again! What a clever little
vegemite!
So, if you're
bored out of your tree and have absolutely NOTHING better to do with
your time and figure that spammer- hunting is at least as worthwhile an
expenditure of time as watching Oprah or Blind Date, be my guest. I
recommend the CAUCE ("Coalition Against Unsolicited Commercial Email")
website at
http://www.cauce.org
as a good
place start your new crusade.
If filling out
forms online, avoid giving your email address if at all possible. If
that's not possible, then made sure you check "no" next to the box that
asks if its OK to send mail to that address.
If you're an AOL
user, delete your member profile. These profiles are a rich source of
personal information ... a spammer's dream.
How To Be Sure You're Not Doing It
Here's a few rules
to help keep you on the straight and narrow:
=> DON'T send
anything (except genuine business proposals to carefully selected
individuals), especially commercial advertisements, surveys,
questionnaires etc. to anyone who hasn't given their permission to
receive it.
=> DON'T send
chain mail. I don't care what the mail says will happen to you if you
don't pass it on. What will happen to you if you do is worse.
=> DO use the BCC
field to send bulk mail to your opt-in list, NEVER the CC field. By
placing the email addresses of your recipients in the BCC (blind carbon
copy) field, those addresses are "blind" or hidden from the view of the
recipients. If you put them in the CC field, everyone can see everybody
else's address.
=> DO be selective
when it comes to your email source. Don't fall for the million addresses
on this one $9.95 CD hype. There are reputable sources of email lists
you can rent or buy if that's the way you want to go. Try http://www.postmasterdirect.com
as one example. Remember: you get what you pay for.
=> DO state your
terms of use of email addresses clearly. If it's a condition of
receiving your ezine that your subscribers accept daily ads from you,
say this up front at the place on your site where the prospective
subscriber provides their email address.
=> DO verify email
addresses/subscriptions by emailing subscribers to confirm receipt of
their subscription and providing them with a way of unsubscribing if
someone else subscribed them. Some publishers require the subscriber to
email back an acknowledgement. That's called "double opt-in" which is
even safer.
-
DO keep a
record of all subscribe requests if you publish an ezine so you can
prove, in response to an unjustified spam complaint, that the
recipient did, indeed, opt-in to your list.
Although spam
appears set to be an unfortunate fact of Internet life, by utilizing the
above techniques you will minimize much of the inconvenience,
distraction and just plain hassle that goes along with it.
Hopefully one day
in the not too distant future, someone, somewhere will finally come up
with an effective means of eradication. Until then, we'll all just have
to keep putting up with it.
|
Elena
Fawkner is editor of A Home-Based
Business Online ... practical ideas,
resources and strategies for your home-based
or
online business.
http://www.ahbbo.com |
