 | Teajai Kimsey
is Managing Partner and founder of Beyond Web Design, LLC. She is a graduate of Friends University. Teajai is involved with many organizations and has many personal and professional achievements. She is involved in the community by serving on the Youth Council, volunteering with the Summer B.E.A.T. Youth Program and is active in the local branch of the National Association of Women Business Owners. Teajai and her husband Paul Hendrix have 3 children. You can contact Teajai @ (316) 262-4868 or by e-mail TKimsey@BWDLLC.com |
Computers & Software
2003-12-01 08:39:00
How do I stop unwanted emails?
: Why do I get all of this unwanted email and how do I stop it?
ANSWER: Unwanted email or "spam" is the bane of the Internet. The reason it is getting more and more frequent is because 1% of people who receive it, actually respond to the spam and buy the product, send in the money etc. That alone makes it worth the time of the person sending the unwanted email and encourages ongoing use of spam as a means to make a quick buck. Another thing to consider about all this junk email is that the majority of it is coming into your mailbox from another country. Most common is South America and Asia with the Netherlands coming in third. So even if our government passes legislation to restrict spam, there is no way to legislate that, which is not under our control to begin with. That being said, how do you get it to stop? Well the best way is to be proactive and not set yourself up to be the target of spam to begin with. First and foremost, don't give your email address to anyone you don't know or trust. Many websites ask for your address for online newsletter subscriptions, to order merchandise or to participate in a website (like Ebay). If you want to be a part of these, first read the privacy policy carefully to be sure that by joining you are not giving them the right to sell or rent your email address to anyone else. If you can't find the privacy policy or you are concerned that you email address will be given to others without your knowledge you have two choices. Either don't give your address or, set up a separate email account to use for the questionable lists and registrations. Many people use Hotmail or Yahoo for this purpose. Maybe you are one of the millions who are already receiving spam. What then? Well there are a couple of things you can do. The most obvious is to change your email address and stick to the suggestions about joining lists. But if you are like most people you have close ties to your email address so this option is not very attractive. You can filter your email in most email programs. In Outlook Express for example go to the "Message" tab and select "Create Rule from Message." This will walk you through the steps to block the offending mail. Understand however, that the mail will still come in; instead of you seeing it the mail is automatically placed in the "deleted" files. You can also report spam to the source. To do this you will need to find the "head tags" that are programmed into each email. This is accomplished by selecting the email you want to report then right click which will bring up a box of actions. Select "properties" towards the bottom of the list. This will bring up another box; select the "Details" tab and you will see the "header" of the email. You will want to highlight and copy everything in the Details tab then paste it in a new message to the company from which you received the email. With this method, however, you will have to become adept at interpreting the "header" because messages that seem to come from "cox.net" for example may really be coming in from South America in which case cox.net isn't going to be able to do much. However, many Internet service providers (ISP) and web hosting companies are now attempting to stop spam by filtering the email when it comes in before getting to the end user. They do this by reading the headers to determine the true source and block that source. The downside to filtering in this manner is the risk of blocking email from a customer's legitimate friends, family, suppliers or customers because they happen to use the same ISP as the person sending the junk email. As you can probably see, this is an ongoing, never ending, time consuming problem. One, which even the Kansas Attorney General, has recently attempted to regulate. Unfortunately, the spam epidemic will probably get worse before it improves. But if you follow the email guidelines in this article (and don't respond to the junk!) you will see an improvement over time in your email.
