Monday, January 6, 2014

Cutting Back On Spam

Technology is pervasive today, and those that make their living convincing us to part with our money are expert as leveraging it to their fullest benefit.  Spam email, spam phone calls, spam snail mail, all leading to some form of payday for the instigator.  People often ask why, and the short answer is just this:  money, payment, profit.  Spam email is sent with hook of some sort, spam phone calls come complete with a spiel.  And on the other end? Buy it now, invest, support or otherwise spend.  In some form or fashion the messages pay for themselves or they would stop. Question is, how do we stop them first?

Stopping unwanted messages these days can usually be done although some forms are easier to stop than others.  Spam snail mail is probably the hardest, since the mail carrier is fully complicit in the success of this exploit.  The best way to stop junk mail is to maintain two separate physical addresses, one for important information and the other to be supplied when an address is demanded but is never intended to be used.  Short of this, make sure when signing up for anything online to uncheck all the boxes that ask whether this company and its partners can send information.  No, no, a thousand times NO!!  And when junk is coming through already, make it easy on yourself and sort the mail by the roundfile.  Keep the important deliveries and deposit the rest as soon as they arrive.

The word spam was coined to describe email, and the word now connotes unwanted junk messages that take time to sort and destroy.  The first thing is to maintain several email addresses, one for public use and anther that private messages are addressed to.  Many providers offer the option of creating an additional address, and the easiest way to invoke this form of protection is to create a new private address and send it only to contacts.  Keep the existing address for the catchall.

Gmail offers another way to filter, in their addressing capacity.  Using address@gmail.com for an example, adding +info or +spam or anything else into the address in this format:  address+spam@gmail.com  will result in a "new" address, delivered to the same account, than can later be filtered as desired.  Another excellent way to handle address disclosure is with an amazing addon for Firefox and Chrome called MaskMe.  This service will create throwaway addresses that can still be delivered.  If the address is being bombed, it easily disconnects and stops delivery.

Most large email providers now have excellent spam filtering.  If using a less proactive email service, use the filtering and sorting capabilities of Thunderbird or Outlook. Though these take a bit more effort to set up, once in force they will ease the heavy lifting and take back the inbox.  Filters are also of great benefit for real email messages, marking them and sending them to helpful folders so the user doesn't have to do it by hand.   Gmail labels offer the same functionality plus additional options to use as desired.

Phone spam is even more annoying, but is equally controllable.  The trick to this, like the others, is forward thinking.  Both iPhone and Android have apps available for managing incoming calls, and some smartphones have this functionality built in.  Calls can be handled according to their status in the contact list, to time of call, and more.  If the calls are coming to the land line, forward them to the cell and take advantage of additional control.  For new phone number requests, set up a Google Voice account and give out that number rather than the real one, set calls to hang up or go straight to voicemail and take back dinner time.

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