Published: February 24, 2008 12:14 am      

How to can the spam

Is your inbox junked up with junk mail?

FAIRMONT — When an employee sits down at his or her work computer, a number of spam or junk e-mails may be waiting in the inbox.

The worker will probably lose at least five minutes of productivity a day while deleting these unwanted messages. That extra time can add up to 30 minutes or more a week, or two hours a month.

“If you’re getting paid $20 an hour, you just cost your company $40,” Aaron Ashley, owner of Shermantic Computer Service in Fairmont, said.

When e-mail users receive spam or junk mail, they normally don’t know the person who sent the message, Ashley said. These e-mails often advertise weight-loss products, are sexually explicit, or offer some type of prize or discount.

The CAN-SPAM Act of 2003, which became effective Jan. 1, 2004, set standards for those who send commercial e-mail and established penalties for spammers who violate the law. Although spam and junk mail in the country has reduced in recent years, these messages are still a problem, Ashley said.

He said spam often originates from far away countries, and people get paid by the number of e-mails they send. An e-mail user may subscribe to one service that he or she likes, and then the person’s e-mail address is passed on to companies that offer similar products.

“And pretty soon you have a huge problem there,” Ashley said.

If consumers don’t read the user agreements carefully when signing up for something via e-mail, they could find themselves in a messy situation with even more spam.

He said a lot of e-mail spam has spyware attached to it that latches onto a computer, causing the computer to become slow and sooner or later stop working. Shermantic does about 200 to 250 repairs a week, and about 75 percent of those are spyware, spam or virus-related problems.

To block spam or junk mail, Ashley recommended that persons use programs like Spybot Search and Destroy or AVG Anti-Virus that have e-mail filters.

“Those programs used together, you almost have zero spam, you almost never see a problem,” he said.

Alex Reneman, owner of Antidote Computer Solutions in Grafton, said there’s a difference between spam and junk mail. Spam is e-mail that is basically sent to people without their request. These messages aren’t sent to a person as an individual, but instead are automated and go out to everyone.

“Junk mail is basically mail that you’ve picked up by going and buying something from a site, and they’ve sold your name to someone else,” he said. “You’ve initiated that somehow. Spam is really the abuse of it.”

Persons should typically be able to unsubscribe from a junk mail list. However, Reneman cautions about clicking on links from unfamiliar sources or even opening an e-mail that looks suspicious.

Once an e-mail user responds to an unwanted message, that will just notify the spammer that the person in fact exists. Plus, it could expose the computer to viruses or Trojans. Spam wastes time and brings a computer one step closer to possibly being infected, he said.

According to Reneman, spam originates in several ways. First, some organizations send spam to every address that they can think of in order to push their product or service. Other persons or companies in the nation and overseas are simply trying to scam consumers. Another group of people are just attempting to clog the system with more and more spam messages, he said.

In addition, people who continue to pass on forwarded messages create spam. Forwarded e-mails, which usually aren’t valid, often try to play on emotions by telling a story about a person who is sick and needs help, and then ask the e-mail recipient to send the message to a set number of people, Reneman said.

“Before you send (it) out to everybody in your address book, check and make sure that’s real,” he said. “If it’s not true, just delete it.”

He said persons can visit Web sites like about.com and snopes.com and use search engines to investigate the validity of particular forwarded messages.

Spam is also a key component of identity theft, Reneman said. Some persons will respond to e-mails and provide information about themselves, which could lead to someone stealing their identity.

A spam message may claim that a large amount of money is waiting for an e-mail user in a foreign country or that a person’s bank card has expired. Always verify the sender before even thinking about clicking on a link.

“If it’s too good to be true, it is,” Reneman said.

Spam causes a backlog in an e-mail account and clogs up the Internet server, especially for dial-up users who have a slower connection. Reneman said these messages are also a big delivery method for viruses.

“It gives a doorway for your computer to be infected by viruses,” he said. “Many times you can be infected and not know it.”

Reneman said persons can take a few approaches to block spam. Many online e-mail and Internet service providers have spam filters, and some mail clients have junk mail settings that can determine what is and isn’t spam. Users can also purchase a spam filtering program for various applications. People or companies can even get third party applications to search through e-mails.

“Be smart and take advantage of the tools that are around you,” he said.

Fairmont State University is able to block about 98 to 99 percent of spam before it reaches the school’s e-mail users, said Dave Tamm, director of networks, servers and security. FSU stops spam messages from reaching e-mail boxes and prevents these e-mails from devastating the servers and bandwidth.

In a day’s time, Fairmont State’s server receives about 30,000 pieces of e-mail, and possibly only 7,000 of those are legitimate, he said. A third party — WVNET — scans all the external e-mails coming in to determine whether they are legitimate, spam or viruses. The messages that are OK are then delivered to the appropriate e-mail accounts.

This additional scanning might add an extra second or two to the e-mail communication process, but it’s nothing that a user will notice, Tamm said. FSU also uses a product to check all internal e-mail that stays within the server.

Not only do unsolicited e-mails cut down on job productivity, but they’re also bothersome, Tamm said.

“Really, we kind of rely on e-mail as a form of business communication, and all of a sudden now you’re getting solicited in your business corporate e-mail and communication,” Tamm said. “To me, it’s an annoyance.”

He said people should always have some type of anti-virus or anti-spam protection on their PC and use a reputable Internet service provider.

E-mail Jessica Legge at jlegge@timeswv.com.