NFIB

Spamming and Virus Messages Waste Valuable Computer Time
03/ 28/ 2002


Nothing eats up work time like spams filled with useless information about stuff that you'd never consider and messages from "friends" about impending doom in the form of a virus. Workshop Contributor Bob Graham offers some suggestions for handling the influx in the most efficient way possible.

Everyone's entitled to try to make a buck, right? Well, yes and no. Like most of us, the people sending spams, those unwanted messages about hard-to-believe business opportunities and get-rich-quick schemes are trying to make a buck. Unfortunately, their tactics of blanketing email addresses they find all over the Internet are heavily discouraged by most Internet Service Providers because they take valuable space away from users and clog up Internet message flows. These messages a refilling email in boxes until you devote yourself to the time-consuming and tedious task of deleting them.

Experts on Internet commerce suggest the following approaches to discouraging bulk emails or spams from invading your email address.

Use your email address sparingly when taking part in newsgroups, listserves and other public forums. These are hot targets for spammers to grab addresses of would-be clients. For instance, after I sent a request to a music newsgroup, I was inundated with music related spams. Coincidence? I think not.

Don't respond when a spam asks you to reply to it to remove your name. This only encourages them to send more to you because it shows you read it.

Don't read them -- just delete anything that's in your inbox that you didn't ask for, expect or recognize.

Join Consumers Connect Inc.'s web page, http://www.ctct.com/privacy/sbscribe.htm This web site suggests that it can thwart the flow of unwanted emails, and in my case, it appears to have caused a decrease in my unwanted emails. But it was only temporary. It can't hurt and it's free.

Notify your ISP of unwanted emails. Many ISPs are working together to prosecute the bulk email senders. If nothing else, your call or email to your ISP might remind them of the problem it causes customers.

Set up a free email account with one of the many services like Hotmail, Angelfire, Juno so you can use that address for replies to non-work related matters. Check that email inbox only when you have the free time. Since it's free, your investment is nothing if you never use it or check it.

What are your secrets for keeping your email under control? The other chief category of time wasting emails is those annoying messages from "friends" and others about the latest and greatest virus that can crash your computer system, kill your landlord and repossess your car. The latest one to find its way to me suggests that under no conditions should I open a message titled, "WIN A HOLIDAY." It came from a relative, who I am sure is trying to be helpful, and as a government employee probably doesn't recognize the likelihood that one of her many colleagues concocted the message as a time-killer on a slow Friday afternoon.

About 99.9 percent of these messages do not materialize into the apocryphal situation they suggest, but still countless people send them to everyone they know, dutifully following the suggestions of the message. DON'T! You just promote the problem you're complaining about. Invest the time in the installation of an anti-virus software program --there are lots at any computer store for price ranging from $25 to $75-- and rest easy. These programs can scan for viruses in everything you download, thus eliminating the potential for problems before they start.

In other words, your best defense against both these modern-day plagues of the computer literate is a good offense.

workshop.technology.thu
3.19.1998

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