Spam 101

Spam, Everyone hates it, so I have made this page in an effort to educate others on way to ease it.

Never "respond" to spam
Do not help spammers
Do not use their services
Do not buy their products
Never visit their websites

Note, this is my personal view on spam and ways to avoid it and hopefully loose it forever. for in-depth information see the links at the bottom.

Email spam
First up, Golden rule, never reply to any spam, especially ones that say "click here to be removed" or "reply with remove in subject line".
Wondering why I said never do this, when in fact it could stop the spam?
Well replying or sending or clicking will only ADD you to a spammers list, will never remove you even if they say they are true Christians and it will save a young dogs life ...

Replying is only telling the spammer your email address is an active working address.
Some spammers have wised up to this, and use a mail bug, so just opening the email will record you received the email.
If you look at the source code you'd find a small image 1x1 linked to a web site.

Best thing to do is to use filters, if you use Hotmail for example set filters to high and just check the junk mail folder every few days.
If it looks like spam, 99% of the time it is spam so just delete it.
You can with a little help track down the spammer and get them shut down as most web hosts don't allow spamming.

Jokes through email, this is a gift for spammers, receiving an email with heaps of forwarded email addresses on it. Do yourself and friends a favour, when you forward or pass on a joke, remove all the previous email names and addresses from it.

What else can be done about spammers? Well spammers try hide their location through false headers, this itself is fraud and can incur fines in most of the world, in fact some people are making money from suing spammers. Here is a news article
If you do find spam in your mail box, never deal with the company involved, the company is classed as bottom of the barrel, never shop with them, tell your friends they are spammers and to avoid them like the plaque.

Another way is to feed spambots with 100's if not 1000's of fake email addresses, one such method can be found at The Harvester Project

Web site spam (pop ups, pop unders)
While this isn't really spam, it is damn annoying and unwanted (in most cases). What to do about these? Some browsers these days come with built in pop up blocker, use these or download and install a pop up killer, saves a lot of headaches.

You may be thinking these web masters are just trying to earn a dollar, maybe they are, but there are better ways to go about it. Again if you see a pop up or pop under do NOT click on it, remember the company being advertised and tell your friends to avoid this company, never deal with them, never buy their products. The more people click and buy from them, the move there will be. Why do you think so many pop up killers are out there (free), because people hate in your face adverts. But if website offers banners or links on there site by all means click them and support the webmasters, but if you are tricked into clicking one (they change the windows status) by all means avoid them and spread the word.

Also another big thing is spyware, adware, scumware, these are built into many programs that report your details back to companies for advertising use among other things. First thing to do is download a program called ad-aware or spybot (search and destory), it's freeware and clears it off your computer for you at the press of a button.
For more information about spyware and a spyware list, check out Tom-cat.

Related links
Tom-cat
Spyware list as well as pc security and general pc help
smallclaim.info
This guy is suing telemarketers, junk faxers and email spammers for fun and profit
spam.abuse
Fight Spam on the Internet!
CAUCE
The Coalition Against Unsolicited Commercial Email
SpamCop's
original spam reporting service will help you report spam quickly and accurately
spamfaq
Figuring out fake E-Mail & Posts
spamlaws
Spam laws around the world
combat.uxn
Find spammers, plus lists spammers
A guide
to dealing with unwanted e-mail
SpamAssassin
is a mail filter to identify spam.
mail-abuse
Mail Abuse Prevention System LLC

Internet Black lists (spammers and advertisers)
Blacklist and more
Blacklist of current email spammers
Spam haters software
well known spammers
Black lists compared
spam filtering lists
Lists and info
Big blacklist

etc etc, I just did a search for the word "spam" (minus the quotes) and Google came back with 4,400,000 in 0.14 seconds, so if you want more help, that's where to start looking.