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SPAM™, Not in a Can, I Am. How to Trash the Garbage. by Jeff Jorgensen
Special to Connected Now
 When I was growing up, I loved getting mail – any mail, especially junk mail. There was an air of excitement in all that mail – someone was writing to me, or so I thought. I think I was too young to understand the mail was unsolicited.
Now let’s fast forward to the present. I don’t look forward to getting unsolicited mail, especially the electronic variety that greets me every morning as I log onto Yahoo. What a waste of time to sift through hundreds, even thousands of messages every week just to find the few I want. Sure, I tried setting spam filters and even blocking some of the messages from getting to my mailbox. I even told Yahoo to only send me the “good stuff,” but every morning my electronic mail box overflows with mail I don’t want to see or read. Known as UCE or unsolicited commercial E-mail, I estimate over 75% of my E-mail is spam.
SPAM™ was born in Austin, Minnesota in 1937 when Hormel Foods trademarked a phrase for a luncheon meat product (spiced ham and pork shoulder). Who would have guessed that an acronym coined for luncheon meat would invoke such rage from computer users? Hormel Food’s official SPAM™ website at www.Spam.com doesn’t object to the use of the word spam (lower case letters) unless it’s in violation of their famous trademark (SPAM™).
 Of all computer-related problems and issues, nothing invokes the rage and irritation of computer users quite like spam. Nothing causes more problems, more downtime (because of clogged servers and potential embedded viruses), and more lost productivity than spam and all it’s related issues. Spam is here to stay, but there are some safeguards you can take to ensure your spam is only a minor irritant and not a major obstacle to your Internet computer use.
Don’t opt-out from an Internet mailing list. Such action only tells the spammer your address is alive. The result – your active address will be sold and resold dozens of times and you’ll have more spam. Instead, set filters to keep spam from getting to your mailbox.
Use a “disposable” E-mail address when posting to user groups, completing surveys, registering products, etc. Keep your primary address for your secure on-line activities. If your disposable E-mail gets more spam than you can tolerate, simply get another address.
Go to www.CanSpam.com and look at some of the available
software to assist in stopping spam. Also, visit
www.SpamCop.net and www.MailWasher.net.
Support the Federal Can-Spam Act of 2003 which took effect on January 1, 2004. It’s too early to determine its effectiveness in stopping spam. But the law does provide civil and criminal penalties, so maybe pending lawsuits by Yahoo, Microsoft, AOL, Earthlink, and others against spammers will restrict spam and eliminate some of the approximate 2,000,000 spam messages sent every day. View the law at www.spamlaws.com/federal/108s877.html
Contact the Computer Guru at
info@computergurus.org or call (916) 449-9590 for
further assistance with your computer questions.
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