David Harris On Spam

Ace Suares writes "David Harris, maker of the free e-mail software Pegasus Mail, has written a white paper on spam as part of 'an active initiative to bring together a broad group of people who can promote education and legislation against spam in the New Zealand environment'."

Comments

Nothing about prevention

[svennieboy]

Too bad the author didn't write about what can be done to prevent spam from happening.

Following things come to mind (some are quite obvious, on the other hand your average user doesn't know these things can have a big impact):

• react against HTML email
• Turn off JavaScript/previewing of messages (or even just images), so web bugs won't be activated
• Never open attachments of unknown origin (this particular practice has been stressed a lot lately (think trojans), but still people seem to happily open every file they get in their email)
• Don't react to spam (quote from the article: "As long as the profit motive remains, so will the problem.")
• Don't use the unsubscribe button (it reveals as much information as a web bug does)

There are probably more do's and especially don'ts I forgot to mention.

As long as Joe and Jane Average User stay uneducated about spam, they will keep on reacting to it and help the problem remain (or even escalate).

Sven