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A double helping of spam
 Two
years ago, Bill Gates proclaimed that spam would no longer be a problem in 2006.
Too bad that didn’t happen. If your experience is anything like mine, you
probably spend far too much time weeding out the wheat from the chaff when it
comes to managing your e-mail. Unfortunately, e-mail is one of those things
that you can’t live without.
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Your computer might just get indigestion from the surfeit
of spam that shows no sign of slackening
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The good news is that Web-mail has become smarter about filtering
about spam. Some of it does get through but most of it gets canned and can easily
be deleted. Still, the volumes of spam are so huge that even if five percent
gets through its enough to give your repetitive stress injury just clicking
the delete button. The worst part is that you don’t even have to respond
to this junk. Spammers don’t care if you respond or not. They just keep
spamming away playing the percentages.
Which brings us to the puzzling bit. Someone, several someones, out there is
buying stuff from the spammer. If nobody bit, there wouldn’t be any reason
for spammers to flood our e-mail inboxes. It sounds nice, ‘spammers live
in vain’.
The best solution, if there is a solution, is to stop the junk mail at your
gateway. Anti-spam software can help. Legislation is a good idea too. We in
India have not enacted laws to curb spam which is why it’s not just junk
e-mail but also SMS that is being used to ruin your day.
Service providers are trying to dam the deluge but let’s face it, if spam
hasn’t ceased yet it’s not going away tomorrow. Set up your e-mail
filters, empty your bulk mail folder, avoid opening messages that come with
garbled subject lines or no subject at all, set up your Web-based mail or e-mail
client to not load remote images (which spammers can use to figure out that
your e-mail account is active) and you’ll be as safe as can be.
prashant@expresscomputeronline.com
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