Spam News and Information

Spam has become a major nuisance on the Internet. Over the past year, spam has increased so much that e-mail has become a hassle to check. More pieces of spam mail arrive than legitimate e-mail! Marvin is a great resource to keep spam from reaching your inbox. The methods spammers use to send spam changes in order to stay one step ahead of anti-spam measures. Since Marvin is comprised of many anti-spam modules and can add more, it stays ahead of the spammers.

To stop spam, we must first understand spam and what is actually out there now.

Spam Tips

Even though Marvin is an excellent service that will eliminate most of the spam you receive, there are other things you can do to help reduce the amount of spam arriving in your inbox.

1. Never reply to the message asking them to stop sending you mail (some spammers have information on how to remove yourself from their mail list included in the mail). This will just confirm that they have a valid e-mail address and they will keep sending e-mail to you and add your e-mail to other lists that they will sell.
2. Be careful when you are entering your e-mail address online. Make sure it is a place that is reputable and will not share your e-mail address. Most places will tell you that they do not share or sell information.
3. When signing up for services or entering in personal information and you have entered in your e-mail address, look for a check box or option that will ask if it is OK for you to receive special offers from partner companies. Uncheck the box or leave it blank.
4. Read the terms of use or any legalize you must accept to download a free product or software, it may say that by accepting these terms, that you agree to receive e-mails from them and/or other parties.
5. If you have a web site, mask your e-mail address on the web pages so an e-mail spider cannot detect it. Or utilize server side scripting so the e-mail address never appears on your actual site at all. Your web design company can help implement these measures for you.

Spam Terms

Headers

Headers are the block of information lines which appear at the top of a mail or news message. Headers identify the sender and recipient of a message, the route the message took from one site to another and so on. Headers are used to determine the source of a post.

Relaying

The act of passing an Internet message (such as e-mail or netnews) from machine to machine. In the days when the primary transport mechanism for usenet was UUCP, relaying was the normal way for a message to reach its destination. Netnews is still distributed this way.
In the modern packet-switched Internet, e-mail is normally sent directly from origin to destination.

Spoofing

E-mail spoofing is the practice of changing your name in e-mail so that it looks like the e-mail came from somewhere or someone else.

Spoofing is generally used by spammers as a first defense against people finding out who they are. It's also used by general malcontents to practice mischievous and malicious behavior.