What's the deal with spam?

emails about that to everybody in the world. Yeah, well, before we before we get into the whole sending emails to everybody, let's talk about why we're about to talk about sending emails to everybody. Because you see this. This discussion was prompted by yes listener me. This was from Jason. Jason says, Hi, Tech Stuff, I love your podcast. I was wondering what is the most spam free online email site? Jason. We decided we were gonna kind of expand that into

a discussion about spam in general. I hope you don't mind, but we will address your question. Um, if you absolutely have to know right now and you can't wait to the end, it's Gmail. So let's move on and talk about spam. Okay, so spam, of course, is unwanted junk email that you know, everyone knows. They they get every now and then. Sometimes if if you're using an email client that does not have a very good spam filter,

you may get quite a lot of it. Uh, if you do have a very good spam filter, you may not even notice that you get it. You want to talk about the origin of the name, Um, well we could. Let's see. Uh, we've got spam, spam and baked beans, sausage, eggs, spam and baked beans, baked beans, eggs, sausage, spam, spam, spam and spam. Um, yeah, it's Monty Python. Yeah, there's a for those who do not know, there is a

Monty Pie Thawn Skit and Monny Python of course. The famous British comedy troupe Um where a couple are in a diner and everything in the diner comes with some form of spam and it eventually falls into a chaotic, rumbling mess of just people singing the words spam over and over and over again. It makes no sense. It's just a big jumble, And that's sort of the genesis

for the term as it applies to junk email. YEP, because you get, you know, a bunch of annoying messages that come over and over and over and fill up your inbox and you might you might have one gym and then tons of spam. So that's essentially where the name came from. And uh, I think Hormel is actually okay with it now. They weren't for a while there.

They seem to be resigned to it. And hey, it is free marketing, right, it's it's one of those things where you know, once the name stuck, that was it. There was no going back. Um. But anyway, so spam, how much of email out there is spam? Yeah? Effect In fact, the vast majority of email is spam. That's not hyperbole, it's not kidding. It's absolutely true that the majority of email going across the Internet is junk. In fact, according to Suffuss, I assume that's how you pronounced the name.

The research firm um they found that two point three percent of all email during the first cent during the first quarter of two thousand eight was spam. Uh. Over at Yale University, they they looked at the email that was going across their mail servers um in August two thousand eight, nine point five of all email was spam, So less than six percent of the email going across Yale's servers in August two was an actual legitimate email.

That's just it blows my mind. I mean, you think these are messages that number in the billions really of of just junk email coming from lord knows where, a lot of it from Florida actually um uh from individuals who have created various uh email accounts to send out tons and tons of unwanted messages. And you might ask yourself, well, why why is there so much spam? Well, it's because do you know, even if you only get a one or two percent return rate on people clicking the spam links,

that's still a huge number. Unfortunately, it's a very very cost effective way to market UM because people can buy discs with thousands and thousands and thousands of email addresses on them and it's you know, giant lists mailing list and you may have even signed up to be on one of those CDs. It is possible that by opting in to select mail from other of of related partners.

You know, when you sign up for a legitimate email mailing list UM, that your name could have been sold to be on one of those CDs and you can look. Um Marshall brain our sites founder wrote an article about spam that's on how Stuff Works dot com and um, you know he talks about the fact that there are you can just you can go on to uh to Google right now and find these discs and buy them up there cheap and get tons and tons of email addresses to market people too. And you might have actually

signed up for it yourself, right. I mean, you're just really annoying. If you think about this, you you know, your your expenses really are pretty minimal. I mean they're essentially your power bill, um an internet account, Internet account, And if you are a truly nefarious spammer, you may be creating a botanet army, you know, getting people to click on a link which installs a zombie trojan onto their computer, which gives you access to their computer. You

can use their computer to send out spam. You don't even have to worry about broadband charges then, because you're you send a command to that person's computer. There's there's the computer that actually sends out all the emails, so you don't have to worry about running up broadband charges because you're just sending a simple command to all the computers in your button neet, as opposed to sending up

millions and millions and millions of emails and um. Like we said, you know, if if only one or two percent of the people who get these emails click on something, that's gonna be a big enough return to justify the expense of setting up the spam operation in the first place, which is why it's so freaking evil. Yeah. Yeah. The unfortunate thing is it's also very hard to get rid of, um because you know they're there are things called white

lists and blacklists. You may actually have exposed yourself to them if you've gone to the trouble of trying to set up an anti spam filter. Um, and there are tons of different ways to do that, but a white lister blacklist. Um. If somebody send you email, like say you've opted in for a particular company because they send you coupons or something, you say, I absolutely want the coupons from this company because I like them and I

want to buy their stuff. Well they might say, hey, make sure to add this email address to your address book. Well that's called white listing. Basically, you're saying I absolutely think this is not spam, this is something I want to come into my inbox. Blacklisting, on the other hand, is putting a list on there and said I absolutely

do not want this to come to my inbox. And the thing is if you get if you have something from say, you know, Yahoo's email account, and one person, you have a friend who has a Yahoo Mail account, they're sending you stuff. But a spammer uses a Yahoo Mail account, you can't very well go, well, don't ever send me stuff from Yahoo dot com because well, that

would mean you'd be blocking your friend exactly. So that's when it starts to get a little trickier because then you can't just say, oh, well, I don't want, you know, q R seven M one dot com to ever send me email addresses, because spammers sometimes do that. They'll send they'll sign up for a domain name that nobody really wants, just as a front, and that makes them easy to block because you can say, I don't want anything from

these guys. So if they even if they created another count using that domain name, you still wouldn't get that email. But as Plett points out, if they go with a free email service service like hotmail, Yahoo or Gmail something like that. Um, it's a lot harder to block it without blocking you know, people that you legitimately want to hear from. And not only that, but spammers are really clever about how to create these fake accounts to uh. We we've talked a little bit in the past. I

wrote an article about capture and captures. Uh, it's a it's a test. It's supposed to be a test that humans find easy to complete, but machines find it very difficult to complete. Spammers are really good at finding ways around capture tests, which most free email services require you complete one of these in order to create an account. So that way it tries to prevent spammers from creating thousands and thousands of faults essentially fake accounts. So, um,

there are different ways of doing this. You can either design soft where that can recognize the caption. Capture are those things where you know, you usually you see a box with some letters in it, and they're the letters are distorted, their wavy, there's maybe some some noise on top of them, like it looks like static, right, might even require you to do something like a simple math problem or you know, yeah, there's there that's that's one of the ways of trying to outsmart the machines, because

what spammers are doing is they're either creating UM applications that can recognize the same sort of visual cues that we recognize when we look at captures, or they simply hire people to physically type in the answer. And what they do is they hire people overseas um in very impoverished nations and pay them an incredibly small amount by the hour to just go in and just solve captures all day long. That's all those they're they're doing. Um, I mean it, and it works. It's again it's it's

cost effective. But as again, if you just get that small percentage of responses, it makes it all worth it. So that's a problem that these free email services are going to continue to struggle with for probably the foreseeable future. Until they can find a way to to really cut back on spammers creating thousands and thousands of accounts, it's

just gonna keep happening. So that kind of brings us to what do you do you know, which which email service should you use to try and cut back on spam, and what kind of things can you do as a user to prevent yourself from getting on these spam lists. Um well, I guess we should take the second one first because it's it's generic across all email, right, yeah,

so simple rules. I want to point out that the bad news If you have an email address, there's a very good chance you're going to get spam, right yeah. And the question is how much and how often? Um? Because the thing is, once you've created an email address, it depends on who you can eat it with. I mean, depending on your internet service provider, they might actually sell

your email address. Um, so it is very possible. But say you signed up for you know, an email address with Google or Yaho, are somebody you know reputable if you don't ever send that email address to anybody. And I could say this from personal experience because I have a couple that I was going to use and just never haven't went. You know what, I'm gonna go check

the spam box. They're empty, They're free of spam. If you don't ever share it with anybody, and you sign up with a reputable provider, you don't have to worry about it. As soon as you start telling people that you have an email address and what it is. Yes, so you're opening yourself up because you never know what they're going to do with it. If you want an email address but you don't actually want email, wait, why

would you do that? So if you're not Pullet, if you're not Pullet, and you actually want to have contact to the outside world, UM stop it. But let's say that you want an email address for you know the same reason, which is to exchange letters with people to whom you are connected. Otherwise, Um, well, then certain rules that you should follow. Don't put your email address in

a in a publicly viewable place on the Internet. So if you have a message board, a message board, a blog account, Facebook, I mean, these are just very simple, uh rules, you know, if you put your address up there. There are plenty of programs out there that all they do is crawl the Internet searching for the format of an email address. So they're looking for a name, they're looking for the AT symbol, they're looking for the domain, and then it adds it to the list. They're called spiders.

And if you've every sort of thing that works for search engines, as a matter of facted it does basically the exact same thing is it's going onto a web page looking for information. Um that's why if you've gone to a web page and you've been confused because it says, you know, you know Chris and then it has parentheses at the words spelled out and then you know whatever dot com you're going way man, And why did they spell that out? And I didn't just put the AD symbol.

That's why, because the spider is looking for the AD symbol. Exactly is it is trying to pick up any uh any email address it confined, and it will do it on other forums to um use net. You know, they're all kinds of crawlers out there looking for these email addresses. So if you don't post it where it's visible, you know, that will help. Same thing if you're if you're you know, if you're filling out a lot of online forums for various services, that's another good way of having your email

address passed around. Look at the terms of service for any service that you're going to sign up for. Yeah, exactly,

it is annoying. But if you if you're really concerned about spam, Like, if you're not concerned about spam, go ahead, but if you're concerned about spam, you you probably want to take a look at that see if they, you know, what their policy is on sharing your email address with other parties, because sometimes they make partnerships with other companies and they get money for the email addresses they provide

to these other companies. Um. And just as an note, you know, you may sign up with a company that says, oh, we will never ever sell your name to people, and it will be in their terms of service, and then there will be a clause at the end of the terms of services say we reserve the right to change our terms of service. So just keep it in mind.

Even the most reputable companies you know, there, they may decide that they don't want to abide by that policy anymore and change and hopefully they won't, but you know,

you can't control that. Yeah. So if you like doing things like let's say, online sweepstakes, okay, there there are sites out there that just aggregate online sweepstakes and you can go and just you know, either sign up for a service so that they automatically fill out your information on pretty much any sweep stakes you want, or you can physically go in and fill out that information yourself.

Sweep stakes. That's one of those things where people like companies do tend to to share the information around and and put you on lists. So, um, if you like doing that sort of thing, what I recommend you do is create an email address specifically for that purpose that's not your personal email address, so you don't really care

if you get tons of spam um. And then you use that one for anything, anything where you're gonna have to fill out a form or you're gonna you know, send information into a sweep steaks or whatever, um, And then you don't have to worry about that coming up your your personal information when you're looking, you know, for your email from you know, your buddy Bob. Um. You don't have to worry about filtering through eight D viagra emails first, you know. Uh. I could say from personal

experience that that does work. However, it's still annoying because then you go into your sweep Snakes box and go, crud, there's a lot of spam in here. Yeah. Oh yeah, that's why I signed up. So at the beginning, I mentioned Gmail being one of the best free email services when it comes to blocking spam, and uh, and I

really do think that's true. Um. I've seen claims saying that as much as spam is blocked before it gets to you, and that many people have stopped checking their spam folder because that's usually if Gmail identify something as spam, it will put it in your spam folder. Um, because people were going to their spam folder just to make sure that nothing legitimate had accidentally fallen in there. And if you read the reports, everyone says, I've never found

a real email stuck in the spam folder? Have you in Gmail? We'll see this is the things that I haven't either. But again I didn't suspect. I suspected that that was not across the board. Um, well, g Google is having to do the same thing that everyone else is, and they're relying on algorithms that tell them what is and what isn't spam. But you know, the spammers are so clever. Of course, I'd rather err on the side

of caution. No. Wait, now, have you seen spam mail in your inbox or have you seen something that should have been your inbox in the spam folder or both both? Okay, it doesn't happen very often either way. Yeah, and that's actually part of what helps them fight spam and one of the things that Gmail does and several other free email services does do does do a similar thing. Ah Man, next good food, I tell you. So they do a similar thing, which is where they allow users to identify

messages as spam. And once you do that, uh Gmail. In the case of Gmail, they flag it and then essentially they prevent that message from going into anyone's inbox. They look for the identical messages that are going to other Gmail users and block it. So the nice thing about that is as soon as someone flags it, it

affects the system pretty much. I mean it's we're kind of oversimplifying here, but it means that it reacts very very quickly because as soon as someone and it doesn't matter who it is, but anyone who's using Gmail does that, the whole group gets to benefit. Yeah, and there there are other solutions to UM. On the corporate side. You can see UM spam prevention UH actual hardware that you can plug into your network that will do some of

the filtering. And of course there's enterprise software and consumer software that you can use. UM. You know, I have an I s P that actually relies on a technology that Semantech picked up a few years ago UM called bright Mail, and bright Mail works very well. But UM, you know, the thing is, the spammers are clever enough, and the software is only so good so that you know, you check in the suspect mail folder and there's always something that's that slips through. I think a lot of

these solutions are really good. It's just, um, the spammers are just clever enough where they can work their way around it. They usually do with a trick of social engineering or yeah, you know, I can definitely say that. Um, between my Gmail account and my Hotmail account, I get far fewer spam messages in my inbox and Gmail than I do in Hotmail. And both of them have spam folders and both of them have filters, but Gmail seems

to be the more effective one for me, right right? Well? Um, Oh, one one thing I thought was really cool about the Gmail solution that I didn't know before, Um, is there actually if you're familiar with the controversial Google book search, um, which is Google's attempt to digitize a lot of paper everything. There's their mission is to organize the world's information that

includes everything that's already been printed. Yes, um, and there are some copyright issues that government looking into, but we'll gloss over that. But one thing that that I didn't even realize and I wouldn't have even thought possible, actually, is they're using the optical character recognition that they used for Google book Search and putting it UH in there

to help identify image spam. Yeah. Actually, image spam was on the rise for a very long time because UH spam filters had a lot harder time identifying messages that used images as opposed to text and saying oh, well,

that's obviously spam. So you would get a message and you'd open it up and there'd be a blue pill or you know whatever, and uh, and again it was just a spam message trying to get you to click on some sort of ad deal or possibly even malware, because that a lot of viruses do travel through email, um, and a lot of these were coming through and getting into people's inboxes and and Gmail. The Gmail solution is to compare it back against this database that they've created,

and if it matches, then um they block it. No, those images can also be tracked, and if you open an email and your email loads that image and they say, oh, well look at that, Bob opened his email, that's a

confirmed email. Actually, that's another really good point pilette. If you've ever received a message where one of you didn't want to get any email from that address anymore, and you see down there at below it says, you know, if you no longer want, wished to receive these emails, click here to take yourself off this list, especially spam.

Don't do that, especially with spam, because what that does is it tells the spammer that that is a legitimate email address, and rather than necessarily taking you off that list, which the spammer may even do. The spammer might take you off that list, but the spammer will immediately add you to every other list you can imagine. Yeah, and

that whole can spam legislation thing not so effective. Yeah, So yeah, do not fall for the Oh, let me just click this link and then I'll never have to worry about this email ever again, because you'll have to worry about lots and lots of other emails. Um. Something else that I thought about just now, Um dictionary attacks. Um. You know, sometimes spammers don't even go online to find

your email address. If you're Bob at domain dot com, you and Alan at domain dot com and Susan at domain dot com and anything else it's an actual word, might end up with spam because especially if it's someplace like an I s P because there they figure that everybody is going to have, you know, and an email dress and then you have the Bob one at domain

dot com and Bob too. You know, they're just kinda keep adding those addresses in the hopes that they hit pay dirt, and in most cases they're going to you know, attain point. It will trail off. But but you know, if you use an easily picked name, you know, it's it's an easy target for spammers. Yeah, yeah, they'll they'll just they'll just do a carpet bombing and they'll send out millions of messages, and those millions of messages maybe a million actually hit targets. And then now those million,

maybe a hundred thousand click on it. But that's still a hundred thousand positive hits. So again, I mean, think of it like as opposed to think of the work you would have to do to identify the hundred thousand people who would actually respond and then send them messages and then hope they responded. I mean, it obviously makes more sense to do this carpet bombing approach from the spammers point of view. From our point of view, it's

really obnoxious and it's downright malicious in some cases. And I really wish you'd cut it out, you darned spammers. I think you told them, Yeah, that'll show them. I'll show them up. I'm I'm spammed out. Yeah, I'm sorry to say that there's not an easy solution to the spam problem. Uh, you know, short of not using email, or at least sharing your email address with people. Uh,

you know, because it's it's a very cool invention. But um, yeah, unfortunately, the spammers kind of get the best of just about every spam filter one way or the other. Yeah. Yeah, Like I said, stick with something like Gmail. Use the spam filters, you know, identify stuff with spam if it does come through. Occasionally check your spam folder. Make sure that you know you didn't accidentally miss a message from someone. Um. I think out of all of them, it's probably the

most reliable. Uh, I mean, but any of them really work pretty well. You just have to You just have to use them to the full extent. Yep, yep. So well, I guess that just about wraps it up and brings us back round again to listener maim have a really bad feeling about this. You should this one's form more. I know you guys aren't the high ku type, but stuff you should know isn't taking them anymore. Space pen is bullpoo more objects work just as well. These are

called pencils. Have a good day, watch out for zombies, and remember that when life stinks, use their freshener. Your dedicated listener, Mori uh Plett. Would you like to address more and explain why pencils may not be as good as a space pen if you are in a space environment. Uh? Yeah, I know this comes if you weren't listening at the time. This comes from an episode of our podcast in which we talk about inventions that we see every day that came from NASA's need to make stuff work when not

in the Earth atmosphere. And one of them that I think is cool is the space pen, which is a pressurized pen. It doesn't work exactly like your ballpoint because you can actually use it in an a non oxygen aated environment like space. Um and uh what more you say ing is well, sure it's not a pen, but you can accomplish the same thing with a pencil, which uh more, if you're listening, I have two things. Yeah, okay, so if you're in the Earth's atmosphere, you can use

a regular ballpoint pen or a pencil. I'll give you that. But in space, if you are on a NASA mission and you need to write in space, a pencil would work until you break the point off and it floats around the capsule and hopefully not into your eye or some other very system piece of equipment, right, and uh you know, say it doesn't, it's still gonna wear down eventually. Yeah, Heaven help you if you have to sharpen it, because where do the shaving is gonna go? Yeah? There you go.

So so, yeah, you've got a point. You've got a point. I see your point. And no, it's not the sexiest piece of technology ever, but the space pen in this case is kind of a cool invention. Don't don't let them fool you. Pult is like panting at the mention of the space pen. I don't even own one, No, but he covets them. I can see it in his eyes. So if you have anything you would like to write to us, you can do so. Text stuff at how stuff works dot com. We're happy to receive your emails

in haiku form or otherwise. And uh, you're still looking for the sonnets, aren't you. Yes, I didn't level a challenge of a Spencerian sonnet, and that no one has picked picked up on that, not even a shake experience. You know what stuff you should know? They got a shakespeareance on it, so clearly, I mean, guys, come on, I know you guys are sharp, and I know you're sharper than the stuff you should know podcast audience. So Spincian Sonnet, I'm throwing down the gun like We're gonna

have a lot of nasty email for that. Yeah, from Josh and Chuck so um, who sit right down the hall from us, So that'll be fun. Actually, you sit right next to Josh, so prepare for some abuse at any rate. If you would like to learn more about spam and email, we have plenty of articles at how stuff works dot com and we will talk to you again really soon for more on this and thousands of

other topics. Is it how stuff works dot com and be sure to check the new tech stuff blog now on the House stuff Works homepage, brought to you by the Reinvented two thousand, twelve camera. It's ready. Are you