If you have an email address you are no doubt aware of the growing problem of unsolicited commercial email (spam) clogging your inbox.

Spam causes Internet resources to become overloaded which results in higher access fees PLUS the thousands of collective hours people have to spend deleting it so their email system remains useable. This contributes to a unique situation in that the receiver pays so much more for the communication than the sender does.

WHAT NOT TO DO!
Don’t strike back: An increasing number of spammers are sending their mail via innocent intermediate systems to avoid blocks that many systems have placed against them- meaning whoever you reply to may not be the person behind the spam.
Don’t reply: Spam will quite often have instructions on how to be removed from the Spammer’s emailing list. However if you follow these instructions you are telling the spammer that the mail reached an address that is valid and that you’ve read the email (in which case you will then likely be added to even more lists as a qualified contact).

SO WHAT CAN YOU DO?
As of May this year it is illegal to send spam to people in Europe, Australian companies are restricted from the practice under the Privacy Laws introduced last December while the USA is still lagging behind in legislation. Even when all the major economies legislate to stop the practice however, spammers will just route the mail through offshore servers not covered by the laws. All you can really do is:

• Use a good blocker (available online for free),
• Don’t reply to spam mail,
• Be careful what sites you give your email address to, and
• If the return address is for an Internet Service Provider, complain to them and the spammer will most likely have their account closed.

You can also stop using popular email services like Hotmail and instead use a lesser-known provider (spammers can afford to simply use random generators and send to all combinations of @hotmail.com - there are enough users to make this worthwhile).

As always if you have any questions or comments about the issue raised in this month’s Info Sheet please email our Marketing Manager david@smartype.com.au.