Spam Strategy Guide

A different view of spam

Dear All

My thanks to all those who have sent me emails this past year……..

I must send my thanks to whoever sent me the one about rat shit in the glue on envelopes because I now have to use a wet towel with every envelope that needs sealing.

I also now have to scrub the top of every can I open for the same reason!

I no longer have any bank savings because I gave it to a sick kiddie who is about to die in the hospital for the 1,387,258th time.

I no longer have any money at all, but that will change once I receive the $15,000 that Bill Gates/Microsoft and AOL are sending me for participating in their special e-mail program ………

Or from the senior bank clerk in Nigeria who wants me to split $7 million with me for pretending to be a long lost relative of a customer who died intestate.

I no longer worry about my soul because I have 363,214 freaking angels looking out for me, and St. Theresa’s novena has granted my every wish.

I no longer use cancer-causing deodorants even though I smell like a rancid water buffalo on a hot day!

Thanks to all of you,

I have learned that my prayers only get answered if I forward e-mail to seven of my friends and make a wish within five minutes.

Because of your concern I no longer drink Coca-Cola because it can remove toilet stains and explodes with mentos.

I no longer can buy petrol without taking someone along to watch the car so a serial killer won’t crawl in my back seat when I’m filling up.

I no longer go to shopping malls because someone will drug me with a perfume sample and rob me.

I no longer answer the phone because someone will ask me to dial a number for which I will get a phone bill with calls to Jamaica, Uganda, Singapore and Uzbekistan.

I can’t use anyone’s toilet but mine because a big brown African spider is lurking under the seat to cause me instant death when it bites my bum.

And thanks to your great advice,

I can’t even pick up the 20 bucks I found dropped in the car park because it probably was placed there by a sex molester waiting underneath my car to grab my leg!

If you don’t send this e-mail to at least 144,000 people in the next 70 minutes, a large dove with diarrhoea will land on your head at 5:00pm this afternoon and the fleas from 12 camels will infest your back, causing you to grow a hairy hump. I know this will occur because it actually happened to a friend of my next door neighbour’s ex-mother-in-law’s second husband’s cousin’s beautician.

By the way….after a lengthy study, a South Australian scientist has discovered that people with low IQ and poor sexual prowess always read their e-mails with their hand on the mouse.

…………….Don’t bother taking it off now, it’s too late!

Yours sincerely

Disillusioned email reader.

Just received in my inbox from a generous friend … thank you Pat

ACTION: Always look for humour in all situations

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Spam for 2008

According to a report from IronPort “2008 Internet Security Trends” the UK now gets 20 billion spam emails every day, which amounts to 98 percent of all email traffic. The trend is likely to continue into 2008 with spammers harvesting personal information from sites such as Facebook in order to target attacks more effectively, according to IronPort’s Jason Steer.

“When a message is customised to an individual; the click through rate is higher than when not,” he explained. “Spammers don’t want to target 100 percent of the population, they want the five to ten percent of high net worth individuals who are worth going after.”

Steer also argued that the current method for evaluating the effectiveness of anti-spam technology needs overhauling. Because spam numbers are so large today, saying that filters capture 95 to 98 percent of spam gives the customer a false sense of security, he added.

I totally agree Jason … filters capture spam but they also capture email that isn’t spam and they don’t stop your domain being targeted.

ACTION: Ensure that your email and web site servers aren’t a trap for spam and that they doen’t respond to spammers in any way. Adopt the Spam Strategies instead.

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Welcome to Christmas and New Year Spam

All the major software vendors are pushing their 2008 Spam Filters to entice people into making yet another purchase in the hope of reducing the spam that is entering their inbox.

I know you’ve heard this before but sorry  that is a total waste of money in my view.

One Critical Spam Questions

If you purchased a spam filter and activated it last year … did the volume of spam email decline?

If you answered no then why upgrade the software to the latest version?

Again I can but say that filters largely achieve nothing and serve to further frustrate you … and not achieve the outcome you seek.

ACTION: Resisit the temptation so spend money on software that doesn’t achieve what you are seeking. Invest in the Spam Strategy Guide and make some real changes.

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12 days of Christmas Spam

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What’s this Spam Strategy achieve

Many people have emailed me and asked the question …

“What is so different about the spam strategies you promote compared to what I am doing?”

My reply is …

“Because my strategy works and your’s doesn’t”

“Sorry in all seriousness The Spam Strategy is designed to allow only those people who you want to contact you, to be able to get in contact with you, to stop those who you don’t what to get in contact with you from getting in contact with you, and to manage and remove those you consider as spammers from those groups.”

“That’s what we all want”

“Ah but is your strategy working … how much spam do you receive?”

“I’m getting hundreds a day”

“Well then your strategy of spam filters and more is flawed”

“But that’s what my ISP tells me they they do, my IT people at work tell me that’s what they do so I should do the same with my domain name as well, remember they are the specialists”

“With all due respect to them and you, if by your admission and theirs their strategy isn’t working then why is more of the same going to work?”

“Why is yours?”

“Because it does. The only spam I receive in an inbox of an email account I have is from a system that I don’t apply my techniques to.”

It really is hard to explain the simplicity of the Spam Strategy, and for many when they read the guide they don’t understand that simplicity, or they figure it’s all to hard, but they continue to complain when they had and have an alternative to their present situation.

I’m continually reminded of Einstein’s quote

Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. Albert Einstein

ACTION: Observe what you are doing and the results you are achieving and if it’s not working test an alternative.

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If you have a spam strategy .. then use it!

I came across three websites today that were pushing for a trick that they saw was … “a trick from which you can protect yourself from Spam Robots.”

The laugh I had was that in each case these sites didn’t practice what they promoted.

I had a quick look and there were “un tricked” email links all over the place.

May be these proponents were just trying to attract traffic by writing on their blog on a hot topic, and weren’t genuine in their concern. Or may be they forgot to adopt their own strategy. Either way their credibility is a bit lacking.

Ok so here’s the sort of things they purport and their trick.

You can’t be spam free if you are publishing or displaying your email address anywhere on the web. But, by the help of the following trick you can display your email address on any website or blog.

Generally we display mailto:you@yourdomain.com in an email link

Instead of this just write

<a href=”mailto:you@yourdomain.com”>Email Me</a>

The @ code represents @ symbol. But Spam Robots can’t read it.

ACTION: Adopt such tricks if you must but Strategy 7 is the best option

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Is Spam about the money?

According to a recent report looking at the “cost of spam” I discovered on Infacta’s email marketing blog, there are 200 spammers around the world responsible for 80 percent of all spam received in the US and Europe.

 The businesses and governments of the world have probably spent gazillions of dollars strategizing, documenting and implementing anti-spam efforts in an attempt to counter these 200 people and their activities.

Consumers on the otherhand , according to the report have spent, at a minimum, $7.8 Billion over the past 2 years directly or indirectly as a result of spam (viruses and spyware).

A suggested strategy of many observers of this and other re[ports of it’s type suggests that "the governments" should hire these 200 spammers at a salary that would far exceed their current earnings to formulate an new anti-spam strategy that really  works.

The bit they don’t get is that it’s not necessarly about money. There is the thrill of the chase, the parry, pitting of mind against mind …. and yes the money.

We can each "do" our own bit to counter spam long before any government/s could even decide that this may or may not be a good idea.

ACTION: Each of us must adopt our own Spam Strategy and implement it. More importantly we should monitor that strategy longer term and not just do it for a couple of weeks.

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Dictionary Attacks - the new concern

What is a Dictionary Attack?

A Dictionary Attack is a technique where spammers submit hundreds of thousands or millions of email messages with random addresses, such as bill@yourdomain.com, john@yourisp.com, etc.

What happens is that spammers focus on one domain name and by brut force figure out what email addresses are valid by sending email messages to every possible combination of address and see which ones bounce.

Anyway, when people are talking about dictionary attacks, you should read that as a reminder to make sure you do not have a mail system with "catch all" addresses, where any mail sent to an unknown destination get automatically delivered.

ACTION: Adopt Strategies 2 and 3 to eliminate the effect of an email dictionary attack

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Spam Ads in Google Gmail

I love the way the Gmail interface delivers ads relating to spam.

I was was checking a Gmail account I have for spam and the following came up

SAVORY SPAM CRESCENTS

ACTION: Get into the kitchen and see what Spam tastes like … I’m not a fan of spam

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Bounce or Black Hole?

I was listening to the radio whilst driving today and heard a "reputable" fellow talking about spam.

• "Ensure that emails sent to your domain that aren’t correctly adressed get bounced"
• "If a spammer doesn’t get a bounce they know they have a live email"

What a strange couple of statements to make.

I’m tending to look at things in the reverse.

If a spammer get’s no response from my email server in anyway with a live address - where their spam goes to the junk bin - or a non existant address which goes to a black hole there is no feedback given.

This "reputable" fellow’s theory tells the spammer when they have a live one .. they don’t get a bounce from live addresses.

ACTION: Apply Strategy 3 and the Response Strategy to all emails

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