Over the last couple of years, the experience of using email over the Internet has deteriorated to the point where now it is often more of a hassle than a help. We get bombarded with email-based viruses (typically in attachments), scams (temptingly worded fraudulent offers), and spam (ads that mascarade as ordinary email messages). In self-defense, we set up filters on our email, and then the spammers find new ways to by-pass the filters, using clever and plausible subject lines that people we normally correspond with might use, and even doing identity swapping, so the From: line indicates that the message is from someone we know or even from ourselves. In self-defense we filter even more. And people who have real messages to deliver find that their messages often get filtered out and/or deleted before they are ever read, while the spam keeps pouring in.
Scam messages are a subset of spam. I get at least a couple dozen copies of the Nigerian scam (in a variety of flavors) every day. For details on what that is and how it works see http://home.rica.net/alphae/419coal/ Basically, it's a high-tech version of frauds that have been run for many years, such as the Spanish Prisoner (which was the subject of a movie with Steve Martin.) A great-uncle of mine got one of those messages back in 1914, and thanks to the Web I uncovered half a dozen other people with similar letters dating back to that time. (For details on that see http://www.samizdat.com/solovieff.html )
Viruses have become a major hassle even when you have software that protects you against them infecting your computer. The likelihood that they are hidden in attachments prevents you from opening any attachment you are aren't sure about. And with, Norton AntiVirus 2003, now I see an annoying fix-it screen each time a new virus arrives in my mailbox and Norton automatically fixes it -- dozens of times a day.
So how can you cope? Here a a few suggestions:
1) Use a service like anonymizer (http://www.anonymizer.com/) which acts as a go-between, enabling you to send email without revealing your return address.
2) Set up multiple accounts for multiple purposes. For instance, use free accounts at hotmail and yahoo to identify yourself whenever you fill out a form at an online store; and only reveal your personal/private email address to friends and close business associates.
3) For your personal/private email address do not use your real name, rather pick some random assemblage of letters and numbers (like a password).
4) Use webmail (web-based email applications) to take a first look at your mail (from anywhere, with a browser) and eliminate all unwanted messages, before opening mail in Outlook, Outlook Express, Eudora, etc.
5) Use Instant Messenger for exchanges with close friends that previously you would have done with email.
6) Use p2p sites (like Kazaa) for exchanging files that you don't need to keep secret (instead of using email attachments).
7) For exchanging files you need to protect, use password-protected ftp.
8) Use personal Web pages to deliver non-secret messages.
9) Among a circle of friends or business associates, use a personal code in the subject line (one that you change each day, e.g., including today's date) so they can immediately know what messages are really from you.
10) Set your email filter so you only receive email from known addresses. (Unfortuantely, identity swapping quickly gets by that -- people pretending to be someone else with hacker tricks. I frequently get viruses purportedly sent to me by me).
11) Swtich to an ISP that pre-screens email for viruses and obvious spam, and that allows you to set your own email filter that runs on their server, before the messages arrive at your computer.
12) Use password-based email. I don't know if this exists yet. If it does, please send me email to let me know about it. If not, it's so natural, someone is sure to offer it soon. In this mode, only if you have the correct password attached to the message does it get delivered to the target mailbox.
Even if you can find a way of coping that works for you, much is lost. It is now very hard to build ommunities of common interest based on email distribution lists, and fruitful encounters with strangers are far less common on the Internet than they were a few years ago.
What can stop this madness? Certainly not laws and regulations. Certainly not technology gimmicks. As long as people are stupid enough to click on the links in spam and people spend money doing business with spamming companies, spam will continue to proliferate. The perpetrators will only stop when there's no profit in it.
This articles and hundreds of related items by Richard are available, in plain text, on CD ROM My Internet: a Personal View of Internet Business Opportunities (B&R Samizdat Express, 2002) for $29. That same CD also includes the full text of his books The Social Web, Take Charge of Your Web Site, Shop Online the Lazy Way, and The Way of the Web. It is available from Amazon and from our online store http://store.yahoo.com/samizdat, where you can buy an entire library for the price of a book.
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