O’Reilly article on fight against spam

Posted by Pierre Igot in: Technology
May 19th, 2004 • 11:11 pm

O’Reilly columnist François Joseph de Kermadec has a new column on the fight against spam that contains some good advice for people struggling with spam.

I already follow most of his recommendations, and still get spam, so obviously his recommendations are not a cure, but they will definitely help if you are now following them already.

As he says, even if you do take all possible precautions, the simple fact that people you know have your e-mail address in their address book and use a Wintel PC exposes you not only to the PC viruses that might scan these people’s address book entries and send infected messages to and “from” (spoofing) your address — but also to spammers who can use such virus-generated e-mail to scan for additional addresses, including yours.

In other words, you’ll never be entirely safe, unless you refrain from writing to anyone by e-mail over the Internet. In that respect, though, burning down your computer or smashing it with a hammer are probably even more effective methods of eliminating spam entirely. Whether they are practical is up to you.


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