bruceb news

The unbelievable deluge of spam is the hot topic in the tech industry, in the legislature, in the policy thinktanks, in magazine columns and editorials and online forums – everywhere.

And there’s no good answer. Many people are frantically working on techniques to control it. There are online services that will filter your mail for a price. There are software packages appearing left and right that will try to filter your mail on the way in to your system.

But they’re new, they’re unproven, they’re buggy, and they’re typically either ineffective – or overly effective, blocking mail that you want to receive. […] continued

It’s not just your imagination – Hotmail accounts get far more spam than any other mail service through any other ISP. Microsoft has finally signed a deal that might cut down on the junk. Brightmail is a third party filter that will be installed on Hotmail to stop the spam before it reaches the mailboxes. Here’s the Brightmail press release. This is long, long overdue.

Of course, I haven’t been able to see the spam in my Hotmail mailbox for the last couple of days since I can’t even get Hotmail to load. I have no idea what the problem is – but if you’ve had trouble getting to Hotmail, you’re not alone. […] continued

Suddenly the flood of unwelcome spam is at the top of everybody’s list. It’s so awful, so overwhelming and gross, that everyone assumes they’re being uniquely singled out. Trust me – it’s everywhere and it has nothing to do with your online shopping habits or anything within your control.

If you’re using Outlook 2000 or Outlook 2002 (the Office XP version), here’s an article about a program that this columnist feels is effective. Warning: I have not tried this myself and I don’t vouch for it! But if you’re feeling brave and it sounds right, give it a try and let me know how it works for you. […] continued

In March Yahoo changed its marketing policy. With no warning, it suddenly granted itself the right to send advertising spam, postal mail, and telemarketing phone calls to tens of millions of its users who had previously opted out.

There was a huge outcry by privacy advocates and lots of press coverage. Yahoo advised everyone of the page that had to be visited to opt back out of the advertising barrage.

And the result, as reported by the New York TImes in this article? A tiny fraction of one percent of registered Yahoo users changed their settings and opted back out. […] continued

The volume of junk mail has increased in the last few months, and people ask me all the time why it can’t just be blocked. Implementing a junk mail filter is a difficult problem, prone to error. Here’s an example in the news today: dozens of e-mail messages telling Harvard University applicants whether they had been admitted never arrived last month after America Online’s junk mail filters blocked the messages.

If you’re using Outlook, make sure you’ve turned on its junk mail filter, by the way. It diverts some of the junk mail into a different folder. Clever spam mailers know how to avoid being caught by Outlook’s filter, and you still have to check the junk mail to see if Outlook misidentified something, but it’s better than nothing. […] continued

When I get e-mail messages that don’t smell right, the web site I check first is the Urban Legends site at About.com. You’re likely to find solid information about any e-mail chain letter that comes your way, as well as the hundreds of virus hoaxes that continue to travel from mailbox to mailbox. Research messages before you forward them!

The Urban Legends Reference Pages at Snopes.com also deserve a look. Instead of focusing on e-mail legends, this site is broader-based, covering urban legends of all kinds.

You know what urban legends are, right? Those tales of uncertain origin that grow in the telling? […] continued

Oh, this is a nasty one. According to this article, Microsoft sends information about its Hotmail subscribers – email address, city, and state – to InfoSpace, an Internet white pages service. InfoSpace then combines this information with the subscribers’ telephone numbers and home addresses. The result is a user database that spam advertisers use to generate junk mail.

Quoted from the article: “Privacy activists say that this Hotmail practice opens subscribers’ email accounts to annoying mass mailings. But Microsoft denies this claim. ‘We’re clearly stating what this is,’ said MSN Product Manager Sarah Lefko. ‘It’s a consumer benefit.’”

“Consumer benefit.” A grown person actually said that out loud. […] continued

Norton Antivirus offers a feature called “e-mail protection” that I routinely turn off. It’s a service that scans e-mail for viruses as messages come into your system – an appealing idea, but it’s implemented badly. It changes the settings for your POP3 server and frequently prevents e-mail from being retrieved at all. It’s not documented well – an explanatory message should come up when it’s installed. If you turn it off, Norton Antivirus will still scan all files when you open them from an e-mail message, so you don’t lose very much protection. Here’s an article by somebody else who noticed the same problem. […] continued