The Mystic Bird

Yes sir! We have more competition in the web mail field now. The company is called GMX and is claiming to have developed the world’s best free web mail service. GMX - Global Mail X-change.

• They claim to have over 10,000,000 satisfied users
• Huge selection of available names with gmx.us or gmx.com
• Spam protection with up to 98% hit rate
• Maximum virus protection guaranteed
• Bundle existing email accounts & addresses into one (much like GMail’s)

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It’s an unfortunate but expected occurance that we’ll be spammed even more this holiday season and there is little we can do about it with the small exception of continuing to be ever vigilant with our spam/virus/spyware measures.

This hot topic I came across from PC Magazine will open your eyes a bit more on the subject:

Spam: An Unwelcome Part of Season’s Greetings

Beware of anything that you don’t recognize the sender’s name from in your inbox. It’s sad but it will help to prevent potentially serious damage to either your computer or your finances.

Remember one thing in particular: “If it sounds almost too good to be true…it most likely is.”

Most of us take email for granted. We just turn on our computers, click on the ‘ol email icon and bingo! it loads and shows us all the wonderful emails from friends all over the world. You know the ones…from the friendly guy at the drug company always looking out for you, the stock market guys, the friends you have in the “red light” district, etc. Yep, simple stuff.

But how the heck did we get all these new “friends” anyway?

Well, many ways actually. Some of them include using one email address for just about everything, one that got sold to a 3rd party for marketing purposes, someone’s PC got hacked and your email address harvested, spyware…the list can go on.

We have many ways to rid ourselves of spam or at the very least, cut it down to a level that’s manageable. But, what exactly IS spam?

According to Wikipedia:

Spamming is the abuse of electronic messaging systems to send unsolicited, undesired bulk messages. While the most widely recognized form of spam is instant messaging spam, Usenet newsgroup spam, Web search engine spam, spam in blogs, and mobile phone messaging spam.Spamming is economically viable because advertisers have no operating costs beyond the management of their mailing lists, and it is difficult to hold senders accountable for their mass mailings. Because the barrier to entry is so low, spammers are numerous, and the volume of unsolicited mail has become very high. Spamming is widely reviled, and has been the subject of legislation in many jurisdictions.

Ok, now that we know just what it is…how do we rid ourselves of it?

There is an excellent book that talks about the spam issue and ways to prevent it. Brian McWilliams book “sets out to answer in a new book, “Spam Kings: The Real Story Behind the High-Rolling Hucksters Pushing Porn, Pills, and %*@)# Enlargements.” McWilliams tells the stories of some of the Internet’s most hard-core spammers and the equally hard-core spam hunters seeking to expose them.” More information about this book can be found here. (more…)

Here’s a novel idea. What if we were able to be involved enough to search for the idiot spammers that plague us all by loading our inboxes full of spam, get our servers blacklisted and in general…just are a real big pain in the ass? Great idea? Hell yeah!

Acknowledging that we all get the dreaded crap in our inboxes and that the spamming business is one of the most lucrative ones out there in cyberspace, there simply has to be something that can be done on the hosting company/ISP side to combat this better.

Granted, not all spammers are running out of a hosting provider’s servers nor are they dumb enough to try it. They are however, smart enough to use all kinds of practices such as taking over someone else’s computer or any other means available to them.

It’s time to start getting pro-active on this menace and looking deeper into the problem. When getting any spam, do you actually look at the headers for it? Most don’t. It gets sent right to the Trash bin, right? Right.

Well, have a look at the headers and see if you can determine where the crap is coming from. Or, better yet…..forward the email to your ISP (Internet Service Provider) such as Charter.net, Comcast, Earthlink, whomever it is that provides your internet connectivity for you. They are the primary ones to go to for this sort of problem.

Now, if your email is domain related (provided by a hosting company), it would be a good idea to contact them for suggestions on how to best combat the crap in your inbox as they employ many different means to slow down the onslaught you are getting.

Notice I said “slowdown” not stop. They can only do so much as they are also combating the spamcops, and other blacklisting services out there that block entire servers (IP addresses) due to reported spam. This is another issue in the ongoing battle with the spammers.

Being blacklisted is no day in the park. If your business is using email to keep up with sales, new contacts, etc., being able to do business online depends on being able to send and recieve email reliably. Being blacklisted due to some idiot spamming from your server or worse, spoofing an email address from a domain on your server is bad news.

A lot of us small business owners simply have to have a backup plan in the wings in case of just such an event. An email address from one of the free providers such as Yahoo (I highly recommend them), Hotmail, Gmail, etc. is a good way to go. Like a Boy Scout…always be prepared!

To be honest, spam is getting so out of hand that even most of the spam fighting tools available out there today are not able to do the job very well of preventing it from getting to your inbox. The spammers are smart, they are always updating and learning new ways to defeat the filters that are employed to keep their junk out, and are just plain determined to get that email for stock prices, or male enhancement to your inbox.

I’m open for suggestions (other than just eliminating my email altogether) from anyone that thinks they have an idea on combating this crap. Others would like to know too!