Saturday, May 7, 2011

Spam: why is it so bad now?

Spam: why is it so bad now?
by
Tim North, http://www.scribe.com.au


E-mail has become tremendously frustrating.

Spam (i.e. junk e-mail) has risen to nightmare proportions. Some sites have reported that 98% of their incoming e-mail is spam.

It's worthwhile taking a moment to explain what's going on and what we can all can do to help control the problem.

What's causing all this junk e-mail?
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First, let me quickly define a couple of terms:

    A VIRUS is a computer program that can attach a copy of itself to another program (or document) on the same computer.

    A WORM is similar to a virus but has the added ability to copy itself to other computers. (It's a "super" virus.)

    A program with a virus or worm attached to it is said to be INFECTED.

Here, a little simplified, is how a typical worm works:

1. You receive an e-mail message with an infected attachment.

2. You open the attachment thus infecting your computer.

3. The worm program in your computer's memory now starts quietly e-mailing copies of itself to people whose e-mail addresses are stored on your computer; i.e. your friends and colleagues.

4. These people each receive an e-mail message with an infected attachment, and the cycle starts over for each of them.


To make matters worse, many worms put a fake address in the "From:" line of the infected e-mail they send. For example:

1. Alice's computer is infected with a worm. It searches her address book and finds addresses for Bob, Cathy, Don and Eric.

2. Without her knowledge, Alice's computer e-mails infected attachments to Bob, Cathy and Don, but the "From:" line claims they're all from Eric.

3. Bob, Cathy and Don abuse poor Eric (who is blameless).

4. Alice is blissfully unaware that SHE remains the source of the problem.


How can I stop getting all this spam?
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Short answer: you can't.  :-(

As long as other people (like Alice) remain unaware that their computer is infected, you'll continue to receive infected e-mail from them.


Okay, what *can* I do?
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Be *certain* that your machine is uninfected.

Let me repeat that: be *CERTAIN* that your machine is uninfected.

Remember, the Alices of this world are a problem because they don't *know* they're the problem.  You might be Alice.

How can you be certain? Simple: always use an anti-virus program. There is an excellent free program called "Microsoft Security Essentials" that is available here:
  
      http://www.microsoft.com/Security_Essentials/

The fewer people whose computers are unintentionally infected, the less spam we'll all receive.

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