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Spam got it's name from the old Monte Python skit where a group of Vikings invaded a restaurant chanting "spam, spam, spam" drowning out all the conversations of the other customers. Many, perhaps most, spam messages are frauds, scams and spurious get-rich-quick schemes, often punctuated by mucho dollar signs and screaming capitalized words.
Not only does spam irritate recipients wise enough not to be sucked into these schemes, but the combined volume of spam uses a significant amount of the available bandwidth and substantially slows down the entire Internet. AOL, for instance, estimates 5% - 30% of its E-mail traffic is spam.
Many of the spammers compile their lists by using robots or "bots" that search the Web for E-mail addresses, keying on the @ symbol. One way to minimize the chances of being tagged by a "bot" is to use the method sometimes referred to a MUNG or "Mash Until No Good". To do this, simply add a word or two to your legitimate E-mail address when you provide it at a newsgroup or other site vulnerable to the searching "bots." For instance, expert@lpconline.com could be provided as expert@lpconline.com_NOSPAM. Then when communicating with folks at the newsgroup, forum, etc., we would have to instruct them to eliminate the _NOSPAM from the address when responding. However, spammers whose bots picked up the address as expert@.lpconline.com_NOSPAM would hit a tilt when they attempted to send spam to this spurious address. Since most of these spammers are pretty much fully automated, it is unlikely the _NOSPAM would be noticed by a human. Of course, less obvious variations could be used: expert@lpconline.com_line; expert@lpconline.com_MI, etcetera.
Most spam messages contain a notation and an easy method to be removed from the list and avoid receiving future E-mail spam. Usually there is an E-mail address provided and a request that you simply send a message placing the word "remove" or "unsubscribe" as the subject. This sounds easy and most recipients send this message innocently assuming this will prevent future unwanted spam from this source. This is seldom the case.
At Loss Prevention Concepts, Ltd. we recommend that persons never respond in any way to unsolicited communications. Specifically, we recommend persons never respond to spam with the "remove" or "unsubscribe" notation.
What you have to remember here is the sleazy nature of many of these spammers. By replying to a spam E-mail requesting "remove" or "unsubscribe," chances are good that rather than being removed from the list, your response is used by the spammer as a confirmation of your E-mail address--making your address more salable to other lists. Of course, in many cases, the attempt to respond hits a dead end anyway, since the spammer has already shut down operations at that address and moved on to a different E-mail adddess.
There are several low-cost programs geared to filter out spam--usually running
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