Jose K Puthur Rajagiri Business School

Basics of E-mail What is a Spam? What is the need for avoiding spam? Methods to reduce spam
Fighting Spam Sorting Mail Avoiding E-mail Viruses

Send mail electronically via the Internet Requires an account on a mail server and supporting software on your PC The username and password will allow you to access your account All e-mail programs allow you to Send, Compose, Reply, and Forward mail

Inbox new messages as well as messages that have been read Outbox messages not yet sent Sent items messages that have been sent (moved here from outbox) Deleted items messages deleted from any folder Custom folders additional folders created by the user

Every e-mail address is unique and consists of two parts, a user name and a host computer The @ sign is required The host computer can be omitted if you are logged onto the same network or host computer

Address Book
Contains the e-mail addresses of frequent contacts

Distribution List
A set of e-mail addresses stored under one name

POP Client Post Office Protocol

Lets you work without being connected to mail server Upload to send mail - Download to read mail Allows almost any e-mail program to access email from server Permits a "client" email program to access remote message stores as if they were local Enables user to access messages from more than one computer

IMAP Internet Message Access Protocol

E-mail overload may be from

mailing lists that youve signed up for some may be humor forwarded by friends some may be unsolicited offers from people youve never heard ofspam.

Spam is the term that Internet users apply to unsolicited commercial e-mail (UCE) or unsolicited bulk e-mail (UBE). You receive spam because the sender has obtained your e-mail address, either from a mailing list or newsgroup or directly from you on a web site.

The best thing to do is to limit who can find your e-mail address before they have it. The following are a few ways to prevent spammers from getting your primary e-mail address: Set up several e-mail accounts and use them selectively. Some ISPs permit you to have several addresses like joethislist@example.comand joe-thatlist@example.com (if your address is joe@example.com).

If you type your e-mail address in a web form, look carefully for an option to opt out of mailings. Many opt in mailing lists claim to include only people who signed up to receive ads by mail, but actually contain people who didnt notice a tiny check box on a form they filled out.

 Consider an e-mail account with an ISP that uses a mail filtering service such as Bright mail or Postini. These services filter out spam before it gets to your inbox. You cant sign up for these spam-filtering services directly; your ISP must subscribe to them. Dont answer messages that look as though they were sent by mistake, they may be a way to find valid e-mail addresses for spamming. Once you reply, you let the senders know that they have found a valid address. Dont bother unsubscribing from any service that sends you messages unless you originally subscribed to the service. Sometimes if your e-mail address becomes more valuable to spammers when they receive a removal request from you because youve just confirmed that your e-mail address is valid.

Look through these sites and prepare a note to have an open discussion on Stopping Spam.

www.cauce.org Coalition Against Unsolicited Commercial E-Mail (CAUCE). www.abuse.net Network Abuse Clearinghouse. spam.abuse.net Promote Responsible Net Commerce. www.spamcop.net Spamcop helps you report spam to the appropriate ISP. www.spamcon.org Spamcon Foundation. www.ftc.gov for reporting spams to FTC.

Bulk e-mail seems to be identical to bulk postal mail, but there is one important difference
when you send postal mail, you pay for the service when you send bulk e-mail, the people who own the servers that handle the mail you send pay for the service.

Sending unsolicited mail to numerous people or sending numerous unsolicited mail messages to one address is considered to be abuse. People may solicit e-mail, either knowingly or unknowingly, if they do any of the following:

Subscribe to a mailing list Request information or opinions from a mailing list or newsgroup Send e-mail to an address to get more information Provide an e-mail address on a web site that explicitly states that the address will be used to send you information

When you set up a filter in your e-mail program, the program moves messages from your inbox to a designated folder as soon they are received. This process enables you to focus on the mail in your inbox when time is tight and to leave the filtered mail in other folders. Filtering works by looking at the contents of the message. Normally, you tell your e-mail application to look at the contents of the message and to do something with the message based on what it finds. You may choose to look at the headers, such as who the message is to or from, or what the subject line is. To filter mail, you need to create some criterion or rule if the message matches the criterion or rule, then the e-mail application does whatever you specify with the message. It may put it in a folder, flag it in some way, or delete it.

Identifying spam by addresses in the headers Identifying spam by subject