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 by Don Hamilton |
The District 9790 MailMan team are aware of the spam problem which afflicts us all. In 2006 Telstra estimated that spam comprised over 63% of emails. Lavasoft - an internationally based software security firm - estimate that spam now comprises 90% of all emails! Why is this so?
Well, some spam is generated by marketers using software to 'invent' email addresses sure in the knowledge that sooner or later they will hit an actual address. Some are also 'lifted' from web pages. But the greater number by far are caused by individuals sending emails to multiple recipients by putting their email addresses in the "To.." or "Cc.." fields, or address boxes.
This is a particularly bad practice because multiple addresses in either the "To:" or "Cc:" field encourages the "harvesting" of these addresses. Vandals use sophisticated software to trawl for email addresses. Their targets are emails with about three or more addresses in the "To:" and/or "Cc:" fields. When they've harvested these addresses they either use them themselves to send spam to unwilling recipients, or onsell the addresses for about US$0.05c each. Of course, they harvest the sender's email address as well!
These 'trawlers' actually see what they are doing as a commercial enterprise. Quite obviously no thought or consideration is given towards the thousands of email users who are inconvenienced on a daily basis by the results of their labours.
When emails need to be sent to multiple recipients the preferred technique is for the sender to send the message to themselves using quotes and angle brackets exactly as shown:
To: "All My Friends" <sender's email address>
As it is considered bad manners not to let recipients know to whom the message was sent, the text between the quotes should be varied to reflect who's receiving the email.
Then use the "Bcc:" field for the group. The recipients will then see that the message was sent to "All My Friends" or whichever description is required. By using "Bcc:" the sender's ESP will send the message to each recipient individually, and this doesn't excite the attention of 'harvesters'.
If there is a need to send messages to a particular group on a regular basis, it would be an advantage for the sender to create a 'Group Address' in their ESP's Address Book.
Quite some time ago, District developed a series of alias addresses to protect members from spam. You will be aware of these. They refer to clubs and District officers, like albury@rotary9790.org.au or dg@rotary9790.org.au for example. The club or individual's real email address is protected behind this alias and can't be seen by those 'vandals' who trawl for email addresses. Unfortunately, when our aliases are listed as multiple addresses in the "To.." or "Cc.." fields or address boxes they are just as susceptible to harvesting as the private email addresses they protect.
No matter how many precautions District takes on your behalf to minimise spam, the first responsibility lies with the individual.
Apart from the creation of aliases to protect your private email addresses, District has also added filters to its servers which are configured to detect probable spam messages. These have a result of the screening being added to the subject line.
The configuration allows messages that score below 5.0 to proceed unmarked. Suspicious messages have a square bracket added to the subject line.
[***SPAM*** 06.8/5.0] would indicate that this one is probably spam but you may wish to check it first.
[***SPAM*** 69.6/5.0] This one is undoubtedly spam and should be trashed.
We suggest that you set up your own 'rules' in using Outlook Express, (or 'filters' in some email clients) to automatically take these message out of your "In" box when you collect messages by using "/5.0]' as the common factor.
