Where I pretend to answer your questions

requently asked questions (FAQ) is an Internet tradition. One problem. I just put up this site so nobody's asked me a thing. Still, I'm going to use this well tred format to cover loose ends I haven't covered anywhere else in my ramblings.

Where did junk email get this ridiculous name of "spam"?

I've scoured the net in search of an answer to this puzzler. The history of the term is fuzzy but the general concensus is that it refers to the classic Monty Python skit where a couple is ordering food at a restaurant but all the menu entrees include spam. A group of nearby Vikings (silly, I know, but after all this is a Monty Python skit) start singing about spam. This drowns out the other conversations. Which is the point to the analogy. When spam started appearing in newsgroups it interrupted discussions. It's likened to someone walking into a party and shouting an ad every couple of minutes.

Spam is just like a telemarketing call or the junk mail I get in my old fashioned mail box, right? So why get so upset when it comes in the form of an email?

Do you get a lot of unsolicited telemarketing calls selling you porno? Do you often receive a junk letter in your mail box trying to sell you on a phony home based business? Probably not. While occasionally you may get a telemarketing call or a junk letter hiding their source do you get any that purposely lie about their source? Probably not. Why do you think this is? Let me tell you. It costs money -- a lot of money -- for telemarketers or junk mailers to send out their promotions. They pay the cost, not you. It costs almost nothing to send spam and you pay the freight. So the small fry scam artists find it a perfect way to promote their sham merchandise.

I pay for spam? No way! Whether I get spam or not, I'm going to have an email address. What cost?

Spammers eat up bandwidth. This isn't just some theoretical issue either. Spam clogs email servers. Which means ISPs must pay to expand capacity. As I already mentioned, you're paying an additional $2 to $3 per month to cover these costs. Call it your spam tax. I won't belabor this point since you'll see this topic covered over and over again at some of the links I've provided.

Don't legitimate companies send out spam? I've gotten commercial email from such stalwart companies as JC Penney and WebMD.

Never forget the cardinal rule of spam: it's unsolicited. If you volunteer your email address to a company and give them explicit permission to send you advertisements, fine. And one marketing trick used by legitimate companies is to make it very easy for you sign up for marketing lists without even realizing it. For example, check boxes at web sites often are defaulted to options to send you marketing email so you have to make sure you check them to opt out of the lists. Sometimes it's easy to miss this. But this trick doesn't make it spam. And companies like these usually have easy, legitimate methods opting-out of their marketing email lists. They want your continued, long-term business unlike spammers out to make the fast buck.

So I guess you're another one of those whiners crying for government action. What ever happened to freedom of speech?

Boy, have I heard this one before! Freedom of speech isn't completely unregulated. Telemarketers can only call during certain hours of the day. Multi-level marketing junk mail is illegal and cases are investigated by the United States Postal Service (USPS). Why is spam special?

Notice this web site doesn't yet contain any appeals for you to write your Congressman. I hope that increased awareness and participation by the Internet community can put a stop to this problem without government involvement. There are cases of a hard core spamhaus caving to pressure and going legit. For now I emphasize reporting and hope it will stem the flood.

Okay, you sold me. But I don't have time to report spam. What can I do?

I understand completely. Believe it or not, fighting spam isn't my life. You can do a lot by just spreading the word. This may sound self-serving of me -- why not, it is my web site for goodness sakes! -- but pass this web site address to other people you know to be sick to death of spam. This is a numbers game. The more people who get involved in fighting spam the sooner we'll put enough pressure on ISPs to give up being a spamhaus.

If I were you I'd concentrate on putting up an effective spam filter defense. It would be time well spent. If even that's too much then just keep using that delete key.

I don't want to get HTML spam. How do I block all HTML messages with a filter?

All HTML starts with the tag <HTML> and ends with the tag </HTML>. Set up a filter for incoming message bodies to filter out any message containing <HTML>. Note, the tags can be either upper or lower case.

I'm not recommending this approach. It's just I've seen a lot of people ask this question so I thought I'd pass this tip on. Just because an email message contains HTML formatting to make it look pretty doesn't mean it's spam.

I'm using Netscape 4.7 to view your site and it looks awful. What gives?

Sorry about that. Spammeister had a choice to make. Do I drag along old browsers or do I add some features I think will be useful in making my site an enriching experience? For example, the pop-up tool tip style help used to explain the headers in the sample spam email message, in my most humble opinion, is an invaluable tool. Much better than the text narratives I've seen elsewhere.

The bottom line? This site looks great in Internet Explorer 5/6 or Netscape 6/7. It's readable, but not much else, using Netscape 4 and many features don't work. I haven't tested it with Internet Explorer 4.

Netscape 4.7's HTML rendering engine is horrible. Many huge web sites are forced to take a lowest common denominator approach to web design to drag the few Netscape 4 users along (Netscape only holds 8-10% of the browser market, a shame). Please upgrade if you can. It's free except for the download time.

Tool tip style help? What tool tip help?

Hold your cursor over any of the teal text. Enjoy!