4 Easy Things You Can Do to Help Others Fight Spam

I hate spam. I do. I hate it with a passion that rivals Graham Chapman. I hate it so much that I spend time every week writing about how to combat it, tweaking filters and blacklists to defend my user base, and researching new developments in technology to see what else can be done. But do I do enough? Do any of us?

I was recently on an airplane (coach) that had wifi and overheard the conversation of two passengers next to me who were lamenting the amount of spam in their personal email accounts. One observed to the other that they “never have a problem at work.” His fellow passenger responded with something along the lines of how the company can afford the “big firewalls” to block all the spam, but free services couldn’t.

And that is when I had to interject myself into their conversation. I let the “big firewalls” comment pass…I wasn’t interested in schooling them on Internet terminology, but I was interested in helping them to address their immediate problem…too much spam in their personal inboxes.

We discussed how spam is generated and by whom. We talked about behaviours that can lead to a user landing on spammers lists. Then we talked about things they could do to reduce the spam, including recognising when something is spam.

Readers of this blog already know all about these things…if you are new to email administration and this blog, there is plenty of great content in the archives that you can review if you want to catch up. That is not what this post is about. This post is a call to action. Here is what I want you each and every one to consider doing. You don’t have to do them all, any one could help to educate your friends, your family, your neighbors, and your community. Nothing in this list should take you more than five minutes, so take a look and resolve to act the next time the opportunity presents itself:

1. Write an article for your neighborhood newsletter, your church bulletin, or even to pin on the bulletin board in the break room providing some tips on how to avoid spam.
2. Help your kid’s coach or teacher to setup a distribution group on Google or Yahoo for sending out announcements so that s/he doesn’t cc thirty different parents every time practice has to be rescheduled or homework is due.
3. When your buddy from college forwarded to you (and 80 people you have never heard of) that chain mail or joke, instead of cursing him and just deleting the message, reply (not to all) letting your buddy know how that can propagate spam and telling him about BCC.
4. Talk to your kids and non-technical family members about not posting their email address on social media sites or providing it to every store and website that asks for it. They can always setup a free account for just those purposes.

It was a long flight, and we spent a lot of time not just talking about spam, but about Internet security, social networking, and a myriad of other topics, but it was the few moments we spent talking about spam that I think was the most useful, because I know they got some actionable tips out of it. Now it’s time to share those with others. Join me?