Everyone who uses an email address publicly will have experienced the increasing amount of unsolicited bulk email. Various filtering methods can be set up for private use of email, such as when you wish to determine who you want to receive email from. However, for public use, email may become less attractive, since sorting through all the junk mail becomes time consuming; what a pity if email becomes useless for customer service communications, for example, because all you get is an autoresponder...
Does BEO not toleate any bulk email?
Yes, but mass mailings should be restricted to subscribers of topic specific mailing lists, i..e. those who have given their consent to receive such email. In other cases, it would be acceptable to send unsolicited email which shows that the sender has researched the target group and the mailing is likely to interest the recipient. For example, if you are selling car accessories, sending email to all the car dealers is acceptable, whereas obviously sending a chainletter type MLM offer to the same groups would be unacceptable.
Any bulk mailing - even to subscriber lists - should include a message about how to be removed from the list - at the beginning of the message. The return address should be the sender's address, so it is easy for the recipient to hit reply and type "remove". Now it is also a requirement that such email contains the name and full street address of the sender. Many mailings do not contain such a message, and some do not even contain a valid return address, which is a clearly unacceptable - and in fact an illegal method.
Update 1998: Since this page was first written unsolicited email has been legalised in the US on conditions similar to those we proposed, even with fines of up to $15,000 if the unsolicited email does not comply with the legal requirements. See:http://www.senate.gov/~murkowski/commercialemail/EMailAmendText.html .
However, US law is not Internet law, and spammers are advised to remember that the Internet is a global medium; - your bulk email will reach users of all nationalities and cultures. Often Internet connections outside the US are expensive, and many users pay by the minute to download a lot of unwanted email in order to get access to a small percentage important email. Also, please remember that users of many cultures may find such email outright offensive. You can spare the rest of the world unsolicited email by filtering any address domain extensions other than ".com" in your mailinglist. Foreigners using .com email addresses will have to accept or otherwise filter the unwanted mail, but we'd rather see that senders of bulk email stop this annoying practice, other than to subscriber mailinglists.
As a user trying to filter out unwanted email, you can use any of the following keywords to delete the message, as most "legal" bulk email contants these messages:
"This message complies with the proposed United States Federal
requirements for commercial email. For additional information see:
http://www.senate.gov/~murkowski/commercialemail/EMailAmendText.html"
or:
" This message is sent in compliance of the new e-mail bill:SECTION
301. "Per Section 301, Paragraph (a)(2)(C) of S. 1618"
Probably the filter keywords "murkowski", "commercialemail" or "1618" will take care of half the unwanted email. The other half are not even legally mailed to US recipients, and you can send a message to "abuse@the-senders-domain" to try to have it stopped. You can also filter according to frequently used keywords or filter addresses as mentioned in the BEO blacklist to avoid these.
Bulk email marketers, now follow this link..
A few hints on how to prevent or limit the number of unwanted emails in your mailbox:
1. Depending on which email software you use, you should be able to set up so called filters, where certain keywords commonly found in unsolicited email (for example, "MLM, milllions, free, opportunity, sex, extractor pro) are automatically deleted or returned to sender. However, filters are not always effective, as spammers always think up new subjects or keywords to get through.
2. Try to minimise exposing your email address: It may not be of much use if you do not publish your email address, but the more you list it in directories, newsgroups and on websites, the more unsolicited email you will receive. One option is to use a web email form instead of spelling out the address on your website. Another option is to render your email address useless by automated email extractors, by inserting the words (remove-anti-spam) in the address after the @. In principle, humans will see it and remove that part, whereas computers obviously will not. However, it will render your email address useless to busy people, who may not see it, so mailform option would be preferable.
3. You may also consider using an alternative address service, such as hotmail.com, usa.net or mail.yahoo.com, who provide free email addresses with facilities for mail filtering.
4. Insert an anti-spam graphic link on your website, showing that you are opposed to bulk email and that you know how to take action against it (i.e. spammers risk being blacklisted). Using the graphic link helps reduce the email spamming in general.
5. Report spammers to the ISP or hosting provider. Usually an email to "abuse@the-sender's-domain-name" (the part of the sender's address which appears after the @ ) will cause the provider to block the account for the spammer, however, it will only slow them down until they find another victim thtough which they transmit their spam mail. Often the sender's domain does not appear in the reply address, but you will usually find it somewhere in the message, or in the header.
6. If you really want to get the spammers, install Wpoison TM on your website. This web poisoning tool automatically gererates web pages and invalid email addresses in infinity, so that when spammers scan your pages for email addresses, the invalid addresses will corrupt their email database and eventually render it unusable. If it does not stop them, at least it will slow them down... Click here to see what the Webpoison pages look like, they will not harm your system unless you are running an email extractor program.
As of 1998 BEO expands its services to include a blacklist of operators who do not respect the basic email ethics. Please feel free to report any excessive bulk mailers, and in particular those who keep mailing despite requests to be removed from the list, those who do not provide a valid return address, and those who send obscene or offending emails to unsuspecting recipients. Do not send us their email, just the name, email address and URL, if known.
Thank you for your support.
If each of us do our part and even if we only manage to stop a small percentage of the spam, it will be a welcomed by the Internet community.
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