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The Junk E-mail Problem

Today, when I checked my Inbox, I could so easily have downloaded 53 junk, or spam, e-mails. These were offering me a whole host of products and services, ranging from helping me to make money (and/or lose weight) whilst I sleep, through to a university degree, cheap toner cartridges, a 'repaired' credit record plus enlarged body parts (men and women catered for). And, of course, the usual crop of Nigerian 4-1-9 scams. (Where I am offered 25% commission in return for simply helping someone move think-of-a-number millions of US dollars from their country and into my bank account.)

I thought this was bad enough, but when I mentioned it to a client, he told me that on a recent Monday morning his Inbox contained over 150 junk messages!

This, of course, represents a very serious problem, especially for smaller businesses. For one thing, the time taken to sift through all the rubbish can be considerable and, perhaps even more important, it can become all too easy to overlook and maybe even accidentally delete an important message from a client or supplier.

The solution - first attempt

My first attempt at cracking the problem involved setting up various filters. Unfortunately I found this to be flawed for several reasons. First, a client sent me a message that contained the word 'free'. I did not receive his message as my filtering system was configured to delete all messages containing the word 'free', on the basis that this is very frequently used in junk mailings.

In fact I soon found I was constantly tinkering with my filters in a vain attempt to ensure that all legitimate messages got through, whilst all the junk was deleted. Lately of course the junk mailers have figured out how they can easily defeat filtering systems by deliberately misspelling key words in seemingly endless combinations. Recently examples include v1agera, S!E!X and c.a.s.i.n.o.

The solution - final attempt

This involved setting up a second e-mail address, one that is more difficult to guess. The reason for this is that junk mailers are known to bombard the e-mail system with masses of randomly generated e-mail addresses, knowing there is a good chance that at least some will get through. Therefore, simply inserting a full stop between a first and last name can help. My new address was then given out only to friends, relatives and clients. Outlook checks this address at the default setting of every five minutes.

However, my old, contaminated, e-mail address is still used by some contacts who have not updated their address book, and by some mailing lists that I subscribe to, so I did not want to close this off entirely.

Junk mail automatically marked for deletion, just click 'Process mail' and it's gone!

I have therefore set up Firetrust's 'Mailwasher' Pro programme to check my old address every two hours. Mailwasher Pro is perfect for this task as it allows me to preview all messages, telling me who they are from, and the subject, but without downloading them to my computer. As Mailwasher Pro also checks incoming e-mails against a blacklist of known spam servers, it means that about 95% of spam mail is already highlighted in red and pre-marked for deletion. However, if I spot something I actually want, then I only need to uncheck its 'Delete' box. Also, if there is incoming mail that you never wish to delete, such as a mailing list, then this can easily be taken care of by adding the address to a permanent 'Friends' list.

During the time I have been using this system it has proved highly successful. I have not accidentally deleted any message I wanted to receive, but I am able to safely delete all my junk mail in just a few seconds, without any of it getting anywhere near my Inbox.

Finally, if you feel really hostile to junk mailers, you can configure Mailwasher to actually bounce their rubbish right back to them as 'undeliverable' and thereby, hopefully, discourage them from mailing to you in the future.

Get more information on MailWasher Pro from the Firetrust website.

Beacon gifs

As I mentioned above, junk mailers routinely bombard the e-mail system with masses of randomly generated addresses in the hope that some will get through. Also, nowadays, most junk mail comes in the form of html pages, rather than plain text messages. These html pages usually have graphics and other obvious design enhancements to try to make them more eye-catching.

However, these pages also very often carry a hidden payload, known as a 'beacon.gif'. These are graphics that are set to be invisible to the recipient, but which contain coded information that tells the junk mailer not only that you opened his mail, but when, and also, which is worse, confirms that the e-mail address the mail was sent to is actually valid. From that moment on you can expect torrents of junk mail to that address, especially as a very recently verified e-mail address is of high value to junk mailers.

Beacon gifs can also be called 'single-pixel', 'clear' or 'transparent' gifs, 'web bugs' or 'Internet tags'.

The solution

The solution to this problem comes in the form of Firetrust's 'Benign' programme. This can be configured to start up automatically when you switch on your computer and then to 'Block images that pass variables to external servers', 'Block images that appear to contain identifier information' and also to 'Block images with associated cookie information'. Benign then automatically checks all your incoming mail and if necessary removes all this hidden information.

Whilst the programme would be well worth its price just for this feature alone, it can also be set to block any potentially harmful code that an e-mail may contain, plus any harmful attachments, e-mail worms, non-standard html and scripts. As this is all user-configurable it only takes a few seconds to setup the level of security that you require.

Please note that whilst Benign offers a highly effective solution to e-mail viruses, it is still highly desirable to maintain alternative up-to-date virus checking software to check files that you may receive in ways other than via e-mail.

Get more information on Benign from the Firetrust website.

Tips to avoid junk mail

Check the privacy policy of any websites that have an 'E-mail this page to a friend' link, 'virtual postcard', or any other method that gets you to supply either your own, or someone else's, e-mail address. Some websites harvest these addresses and then sell them to junk mailers.
Assume that 'Unsubscribe' links within junk e-mails will be used only to verify to the spammer that they have found a legitimate address, and that using them will therefore always generate yet more junk mail. (I once received a junk mail offering to sell me a list of recent 'unsubscribers'.)
Avoid having your 'private' e-mail address appear on any web page, news group, message, bulletin board, etc. 'Spam bots' are used to crawl the web and harvest any e-mail addresses that can be found.
Be wary of sites that offer 'free' e-mail addresses. Not only will you be liable to floods of junk mail, but the address of anyone you correspond with will also have their address harvested.
Do not allow your e-mail address to fall into the hands of junk mailers by replying to any chain letters, appeals or unsolicited 'surveys'.
If you are e-mailing to a group of friends, clients, customers or colleagues, do not use your e-mail programme's 'CC' field. It is much better to use the 'BCC' field as this will hide the names and addresses of all your other recipients, thereby reducing the risk of your entire mailing list perhaps falling into the wrong hands. (If your e-mail programme doesn't have an obvious 'BCC' option, clicking on the 'Cc...' button should reveal it.)

So, why do people send junk mail?

Many people are puzzled by the amount of apparently pointless junk e-mail they receive. Surely no-one falls for this stuff any more?

Well, the amazing thing is that most of these junk mailers don't want to sell you anything at all! All they want, pure and simple, is for you to unsubscribe. Once you have 'unsubscribed' they then know that your e-mail address is active, and once they know this they can then sell your e-mail address to other junk e-mailers, who then sell it to other junk e-mailers. So it seems that the money in junk mail mostly comes just from junk mailers selling their lists to each other, or else to organisations who buy these lists believing that they have bought a genuine opt-in mailing list.

Wired News recently carried out an experiment and replied to 75 junk e-mails. They found an amazing 56% never responded at all to a request for more information on the product or service offered in the original message. What they did find however was that the special e-mail addresses they had set up for their replies quickly started to show up in new junk e-mails they received. They also found that only 17% of the replies they did receive were legitimate offers, and that the organisations concerned had not realised they had actually bought a junk e-mail list.

Junk e-mail tips

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