EXCLUSIVES

By Nick dePlume
Images by Dan Lewis

"I have a love/hate relationship with the internet. While it has helped me stay in contact with my loved ones, it has also created a distracting and time consuming necessity of deleting junk email." John M Brendan

"Make free money, beautiful virgins, lose weight... Don't we have enough superficial garbage distracting us? the internet has become the perfect medium for junk-email. I feel like I spend half my time online doing nothing but deleting." M. Lev

"Spammers have grown so much and they have become sophisticated. They are employing complex techniques and creating deceptive messages. In return, I have made an effort to report every one of them." John Lyman

"I absolutely hate junk email. Congress should pass sweeping legislation that enforces strict guidelines and fines email junk marketers, possibly even making junk marketing a criminal offense." Carol Bendoroff

"I am anticipating a revolutionary software product that will completely eliminate junk-email.that anticipation may be more hopeful than realistic, as I am unsure if blocking all spam email is entirely feasible." Mary Wingles

Make Money Fast! Your Car Is Waiting! Business Assistance Needed! Nearly all of us have received e-mail messages like these: unsolicited bulk e-mail, commonly known as "spam."

Spam is increasing Internet users' frustration as it decreases productivity, lengthening the time it takes to wade through new messages each morning. Spam is evolving and bulk e-mailers are getting smarter, but it's still possible to effectively battle junk e-mail and reduce the amount of spam that you have to deal with.

The Basics

Never respond to spam, even if an "opt out" address is provided. Almost every time, this will do little more than identify your address as an active recipient for even more messages. And in the rare instance where this isn't the case, the e-mail will almost certainly bounce or be sent to someone not affiliated with the spammers. Beware HTML e-mail - spam containing graphics which load from external servers could potentially identify your e-mail address as an active one, like above. For the best privacy protection, disable HTML rendering in your e-mail program, if supported. In Apple Mail, it can be disabled via the Viewing preference panel; in Microsoft Entourage, in the Mail & News preferences. In the past, a commonly suggested anti-spam filter or mail rule for your e-mail program has been to automatically flag e-mails which don't contain your e-mail address in the To: header. However, this fails in two area. First, e-mails in which you are a Blind Carbon Copied (BCC) recipient will be marked as junk. Second, much of the newer spam actually contains your real e-mail address in the To: field, making it even harder to discern the difference between real e-mail and junk. To effectively fight back, you'll need to work smarter - read on.

Mail

Mac OS X v10.2 "Jaguar" includes a new version of Apple's Mail application, now with a built-in Junk Mail filter. According to Apple, Mail combats spam using a technique called "adaptive latent semantic analysis."

Mail's spam filter starts out in training mode, labeling junk messages as it downloads new e-mail. If Mail incorrectly marks a message, you can correct the error, and Mail will adjust the message's label accordingly. The Junk Mail filter performs respectably from the start, but it learns from its mistakes.

As you receive more spam and fine-tune the filter, teaching it what is spam and what isn't, Mail's accuracy improves significantly. When you feel that the filter is up to par, you can put it on automatic mode.

In automatic mode, Mail automatically ferries spam into a Junk folder in the mailbox list. You can instruct Mail to automatically delete the messages in the Junk folder periodically, or you can do so manually, looking through the folder quickly to be sure that no legitimate mail has been marked as spam.

Best, you can continue to fine-tune the filter while in automatic mode, improving it each day as you receive new types of spam and as junk e-mailers apply new techniques. Mail's customizable toolbar includes an icon for marking a selected message as Junk, making it a simple task to identify unmarked spam in your inbox and whisk it off to the Junk Mail folder.

If you have special criteria you want to add to the filter, you can customize it in the Rules area of Mail's preferences. You can also change the action that Mail performs, via the Rule controls, if you don't want your spam to be filed in the Junk Mail folder, or would like to define additional actions.

Microsoft Entourage

Like its predecessor Outlook Express, Microsoft Entourage -the e-mail/PIM component of the Office productivity suite -provides a spam filter of its own.

Through a preference window, you can set the sensitivity of Entourage's filter, as well as customize a variety of additional settings. For example, you can instruct Entourage to disable the filter for messages from a certain domain name -for example, e-mails from companies you regularly do business with. There are other actions that you can tell Entourage to apply to spam, such as marking messages as "read" or running an AppleScript.

As for the filter itself? While it does a respectable job, and can be fine-tuned manually via Entourage's Mail Rules, it can't compare to the ease and adaptability of the new Apple Mail.

SpamCop (www.spamcop.net) provides several services useful for fighting junk e-mail. The first service -spam reporting - is completely free, and requires only a registered account. When you receive spam, use your e-mail program to display the full text of the e-mail, including the headers showing the path the message traveled. While spammers do their best to hide their tracks, buried deep in this header is information that can help find the source server. Submit the e-mail with header to SpamCop, and it will immediately analyze the message, determining the servers that facilitated sending the spam, and letting you send automated e-mails to the administrator of the originating server. If successful, this will result in a spammer's account being shut down. SpamCop also adds the report to its database of known spammers, in what is a near-definitive blacklist of junk e-mail.

Spam can be submitted via e-mail, by forwarding junk e-mail to a special address provided by SpamCop, or through an online interface.

SpamCop also offers e-mail accounts for $30 per year. This harnesses the power of SpamCop's junk e-mail database, filtering out e-mail from known spam sources into a special "Held Mail" folder, where it's stored on SpamCop's servers for two weeks. E-mails containing viruses are also filtered out.

SpamCop's e-mail can work with your current account or can serve as a new e-mail address. SpamCop also provides a webmail interface. You can have your ISP forward your e-mail to your new SpamCop address, or configure your new SpamCop e-mail to collect messages from your old e-mail address and then perform its filtering.

Other Utilities

There's a wealth of software that can aid you in fighting spam, and we've put together a sampling of what's out there. All of the software listed is compatible with Mac OS X, so visit the companies' Web sites for more information and to take a closer look.

POPmonitor: Shareware, $25 - www.vechtwijk.nl The worst type of spam is that which has a large attachment. Few frustrations compare to downloading several megabytes of an e-mail only to trash it upon receipt. On a high-speed internet connection this can be a royal annoyance; on dial-up, it's a painful experience that screeches productivity to a halt as you wait for several minutes. POPmonitor logs into your POP mailbox, so you can quickly see a listing of all the messages sitting on your ISP's mail server, waiting for your e-mail client to download them. From there you can quickly delete unwanted messages, right on the server. POPmonitor goes further in fighting spam with its automated spam removal, lists of blocked senders, and custom filters.

Spamfire: Lite Version, $19, Pro Version, $29, Boxed Version, $39, Free Demo - www.matterform.com Spamfire is a junk e-mail filter of its own, but functions separately, so it works with any e-mail software. Spamfire logs into your e-mail account and removes junk messages from your mailbox. It then launches your normal e-mail program, which proceeds to download your e-mail as usual, sans spam. Spamfire includes scheduling preferences, a filter editor, and the ability to set filter sensitivity.

SpamCopSend: Freeware < http://burtcom.com/lex/ An AppleScript, SpamCopSend is compatible with Apple's Mail app. When activated, it draws on the filtered spam in your Junk folder and reports all messages to SpamCop. A free SpamCop reporting address, as described above, is required. One word of caution: Be sure you don't have any legitimate e-mail in your Junk folder, or SpamCop will treat it as spam when reported. Another shareware utility from Subsume Technologies (http://www.subsume.com) adds a menu item to Mail's Message window, for the purpose of reporting spam to SpamCop.

SpamSieve: Shareware, $10 - www.command.com/spamsieve/ Do you use Entourage, Bare Bones Software's Mailsmith, or CTM Development's PowerMail, but want to add some of the usefulness of a smart filter like that of Apple Mail? The SpamSieve filter, as with Mail, improves in accuracy as you train it. SpamSieve does its job through AppleScript.

SpamStopper: Freeware - www.railheaddesign.com A must for webmasters! If your e-mail address is plastered on your public Web site, you're operating a gold mine for spammers; who employ automated bots to roam the web, gathering addresses to send junk to. Luckily, HTML and JavaScript encoding methods exist, which can provide a normal "mailto" link for site visitors but disguise your address from the harvesting machines. RAILhead Design's simple and free SpamStopper utility automates this process, converting your link to the desired format on the fly.