1. ANTI SPAM
(and Uncle BadBoyz)
The first thing I am
going to tell you, you
may not believe: 85% of all SPAM is generated by about 10
companies owned by people that are making a fortune selling cheap
garbage
(JUNK), or they are advertising for others that sell all kinds of
things.
So how do you fight these big junk-email-machines? You really
can't,
but then again, you don't have to because we do it for you. Believe it
or not, the business world is very sick of SPAM, too. It costs huge
amounts
of money to pay for the high speed Internet connections and most of the
space on these connections is consumed by junk email (SPAM)! This is
the
same thing as companies stealing YOUR money to buy the post stamps to
send
YOU printed junk mail (that's not nice, now is it?). To combat
SPAM,
the business world has cooperated to form several organizations that
track
these Junk Email Criminals. And yes, they are criminals. They steal our
bandwidth. WE PAY for their advertising. These Anti SPAM organizations
provide a way for our mail servers to reject the connections of other
servers
run by these hoodlums. As soon as we see their addresses, we disconnect
them. We don't even bother to see what it is they are trying to send.
2. Another 10% Is
Small Potatoes
Another 10% of the SPAM
is generated by
smaller SPAM Operators all over the world. They generally send their
emails
over computer servers that they break into by taking advantage of naive
server operators (new people that don't know enough to protect their
servers
when they set them up). There are also private organizations that were
created by plain old people like you and me that track and help us to
stop
this additional 10% of the criminals. These companies have fake email
addresses
and whenever these addresses get email, the server that sends them the
email is placed on a blocked list for several days. Now, you may ask,
"how
do they know it is junk email (SPAM) going to these fake email
addresses?"
Because these addresses are never used and never legally added to any
mailing
list (they don't have users for them, so how could they?). So if
they
end up getting email, it IS SPAM.
3. Leaks can add
up to a flood if left
unchecked...
Even though these
organizations help us
to block 95% of the junk email from all over the world, the 5% that
gets
through is still very irritating and is also very time consuming. In
the
last 50 days (since this was written), we have had 348,659 mail servers
attempt to connect with our mail servers. Out of those, we blocked 224,
808 of them (they were certified SPAMMERS). Then out of the 123,851
that
were connected, we blocked another 2021 emails as SPAM. This means that
very close to two thirds of all connections were blocked as
certified
SPAMMERS. This means we had 121,830 emails that were sent and
received
on our servers. Out of those, only about 7% were outgoing connections,
and we do not send any SPAM from our servers. We monitor all users
on
our servers to make sure we are NOT a source of SPAM. Users sending
even ONE SPAM (a single unsolicited commercial or
political
email) are immediately terminated and not allowed back on our servers.
This is a CONCRETE policy (set in stone) and will never change. Now, we
can assume that at least 50% of all incomming email that makes it to
the
users is SPAM, and this is a very conservative estimate. This means
that
56,650 SPAM emails still made it into our users.We don't like it, but
if
we were more agressive, we may block an important business or personal
email, which we NEVER want to do.
It is the leftover
5% of the spammers
that are making it through our defenses, and YOU can help us (and
yourselves)
by not letting your name get on these junk email lists to begin with.
Here's
how to do just that:
- Do not put your
email address up on public
web sites, bulletin boards, or other visible places on the web. Simply
avoid it the best you can. The SPAMMERS have special software that goes
from web site to web site (by address number in order) and "harvests"
all
of the email names on them. If you have to put your email address
up on a message board in the text area of the message, you can
generally
avoid being harvested by entering your email address like this: MyEmailName(at)Blibit.com
- Check the
privacy
policy of web sites where
you must enter your email address and make sure it specifically says
that
they NEVER sell or give away their lists of email addresses for any
reason.
If it doesn't say this, then they probably sell their addresses lists.
- When signing up
for
things, pay attention
to "check boxes" on the sign-up form that ask (confirm) if they can "occasionally
share
your
email address" with their "friends" to send you wonderful
offers. JUST SAY NO. This is how it all begins. Company A
sells the list to Company B, then Company B sells
it
to Company C, and before you know it, you end up on every SPAM
list
in the world. Keep in mind that Company A would NEVER sell your name to
a real SPAMMER, but they don't know if Company C, D, E or F are
reputable.
In fact, they don't even know they exist.
- If your "friend"
is
one of those people that
sends you jokes, pictures, and other things, make sure to ask them NOT
to put your name in a BIG LIST in the TO: or CC: line
of
the email. Tell them to use the BCC: line. The email
addresses
placed in the BCC: line don't show up on the next person's computer.
A
lot
of email harvesting is from long lists of email addresses in jokes
that are forwarded around the country. Likewise, when you forward
something
to your friends, take the rest of the names out of the forwarded email.
Edit it BEFORE you send it. It only takes a few seconds, and it is
the
courteous thing to do.
- Porn sites (and
other nefarious web sites)
are NOT to be trusted with your email address - PERIOD. Do I really
need
to tell you this? Well... I did, anyway.
That's all there is
to it. It's not difficult
to prevent a TON of junk email from entering your in-box every day. You
just have to be a bit proactive in preventing your name from showing up
on the proverbial bathroom walls of the Internet.
If you end up getting
a bunch of SPAM and
you don't want it. Ask us for a new email address and we will forward
your
old email address to your new one until you have notified all of the
legitimate
users of your old address (We can set up a 90 or 120 day auto-destruct
of your old email address).
If you don't have ANTI-Everything software yet,
here is a page with
my favorites on it:
http://www.blibit.com/Favorites.html
And most of it is FREE! Free is good (most of the time, it
is...).
Thank
you,
The
Management
of Blibit.com
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