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What SPAM Means: "Stupid People Annoying Me"

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What SPAM Means: "Stupid People Annoying Me"

English, German, Italian - It's All SPAM To Me

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Has anyone else noticed sudden blast of unsolicited e-mail (spam) loaded with url's for unsuspecting and curious Internet surfer to click on?

What's even better, bulk of this SPAM is in a foreign language. I was at a neighborhood party this weekend and you can't imagine number of people who asked me for assistance with this. They have no idea what to do.

The sad fact is there are a lot of Stupid People who have nothing better to do and can't seem to find a better way of making a buck than Annoying Me and everyone else subject to their stupidity with spam. I guess that's a little harsh. Not really.

How Does The Average Person Deal With This

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I wrote in a previous article how bad a feel for average person having to deal with such things. It is increasingly becoming a nightmare for all to deal with. For technical among us, it's not as bad given that we deal with such things on a technical level almost everyday.

Given this current flood of SPAM I thought I would post an article I wrote quite some time ago. It's a short article, and may be old news for some, but I can tell you that many people still don't follow basic's when dealing with SPAM.

How You May Be Helping Spammers

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I can't imagine that anyone with an e-mail address has not received unsolicited e-mail or spam in one form or another. What do you do when you receive these types of e-mails. Do you delete them right away, respond to them informing sender you do not wish to receive them, or forward them to a friend whom you think might be interested in information?

When Internet as we know it was very young and most unsolicited e-mails where either by accident or result of opt-in subscriptions, you could respond with word "unsubscribe" in reply subject and your name was taken off list. That quickly changed once people found out how powerful a marketing tool e-mail was. Now, most of time you respond to unsolicited e-mails you are letting sender know that your e-mail address is active or alive. Instead of being taken off list you are targeted more aggressively. The sender of e-mail may also sell your e-mail address to other e-marketers, substantially increasing number of unsolicited e-mails your receive.

Fortunately, though, publishers of email newsletters have several choices. Let’s now work our way through this small jungle, and try to remember that although these choices force us to do extra research, they also give us many more options than we have with printed newsletters.

The first choice is between manual and automated mail management. The manual approach is how many, if not most, email newsletters get started. And, it’s a good system as long as mailing list remains small, say something less than 100 or 200 names (depending on how efficient you are at managing your email program). You can do this with an email program like Outlook Express or Eudora.

But, if your list is growing, you’ll soon grow impatient with amount of time it takes to manually add and remove subscribers, as well as to send newsletter. For example, you might need to divide your list into parts, and send out a series of mailings rather than just one, to keep size down.

That’s when it’s time to check out automated approach, using mailing list managers. These programs and services come in several forms. By way -- and you’ll need to know this when you go looking for an automated service -- difference between an announcement list and a discussion list.

An announcement list is essentially one way, which takes in most regular newsletters, or ezines. You are only person allowed to send a message to people who have subscribed. You’re also probably only person who knows email addresses of subscribers.

However, if you want to make it interactive, with recipients allowed to post contributions, as well as receive them, then you need a discussion list. For most of us, though, an announcement list is best starting point for a newsletter.