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Spam is generally defined as e-mail received that is unsolicited and undesired. This definition is kind of a shame because while the unsolicited part of the definition is fairly easy to establish factually most spammers take the convenient position that because they thought you desired their email it is not Spam. Spammers – the people who send Spam – are a people with no integrity.  You probably already know that.

It is a serious problem. Not only do Spammers waste the time of millions of people to make each dollar they are compromising the Internet itself. By most estimates Spam is more than 60% of all email sent on the Internet.  This creates a huge clog that impinges on legitimate email (to any spammer reading legitimate email means email that it is solicited and desired).

Spammers get your email address in three ways. One way is to take your publicly listed domain name (e.g. lancom.co.nz for LANcom Technology) and guess mailbox names like info (info@lancom.co.nz) or sales (sales@lancom.co.nz) or accounts (accounts@lancom.co.nz).

The other way is to harvest your mail address from the Internet. Spammers have programs that search web pages looking for email addresses. If your web site has staff profiles and if those staff profiles have email addresses embedded in them those addresses will be harvested by the Spammers and your people will be sent Spam.

The third way is by buying addresses. This can by purchasing lists of email addresses from unscrupulous companies. For example, an insurance company who has decided that they can make money by selling your information. Legislation has been effective in limiting this practice. Some spammers illegally bribe employees of companies with these lists to get a copy.

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