Anti-Spam - Retaking Your E-mail Inbox

You have mail, lots of it filling your e-mail account. Some of it you want. Lots of it you don't. What do you do?

First, you need to admit you have a problem. You need to accept responsibility for putting yourself on so many mailing lists (even if you don't remember doing so or didn't realize you were doing that). This was covered in one of my previous postings.

Second, you need to unsubscribe to each list you don't want to be on. Once upon a time, e-mail providers were telling people to just delete the e-mails and not respond to them in any way. They put forward the idea that any sort of response would "confirm your address" and open you up to lots more unwanted e-mail. If that was ever true, that is not the way things are today. When your e-mail does not bounce back to the originator, the sender considers it confirmed as a real address. Furthermore, in the United States, senders of bulk and commercial e-mails must honor any removal requests within a reasonable period (ten days) to remain in compliance with anti-spam laws. Even if you personally and specifically requested to be added to the mailing list, your removal request must be honored.

Third, you need to change the behavior that got you on those lists in the first place. Either stop doing those things, or use a special mailbox just for that purpose as was suggested in another earlier post.

Fourth, set any filters you may have on your e-mail account to automatically file as junk all e-mails coming from anyone not in your address book. This does mean you will need to scan the contents of your junk folder periodically because friends and relatives change addresses. They don't always let you know. Even if they do, their notification may arrive by e-mail.

As I have spoken with friends who do a lot of bulk commercial e-mailing, I have gotten some interesting feedback concerning what people should NOT do to get off mailing lists.

1) Unless the removal instructions in the body of the e-mail specifically say to do this, do not just hit REPLY and press SEND. There are some people who do accept this as a means of communicating an opt out request. However, it is NOT UNIVERSAL. In fact, it is becoming less commonly accepted. This is because many people use automatic reply messages in their mailboxes when they are out. Then, when they return, they delete the message, but they don't always turn the feature off. This results in every e-mail they receive triggering an automatic response with no message. So, more and more bulk mailers are ignoring these.

2) Unless the opt out instructions in the body of the e-mail specifically say to do this, do not just send a blank e-mail. For some mailers this is the method to opt IN instead of OUT.

3) Do not take out your frustrations on the mailer. Some people refuse to accept responsibility for allowing themselves to be on the list. Instead of being adult about the matter, they will send vulgar and abusive messages to whomever is opening the mail. This is just plain foolish for two reasons. a) The senders already have your e-mail address. They probably know how to remove you from this particular list and add you to hundreds of others possibly outside the jurisdiction of the United States. Being abusive or threatening does not serve your purpose. It may make your situation worse if they respond in kind. b) The second reason this is foolish is because the most successful bulk e-mailers are employing others to open their mail and deal with the removal requests. The people who get the hateful messages are not necessarily the ones sending out the mail. They're just performing a clerical function and trying to feed their families.

Finally, if taking the right steps does not restore a level of control over your e-mail, you may need to consider changing your e-mail address. When you do that, start from the beginning to limit who has access to your new primary e-mail address. Give one of your junk e-mail addresses to everyone else.

Fighting the spam wars is never ending. In a future post, I'll talk discuss dealing with illegal senders of truly unsolicited bulk e-mail(UBE).

That's Wade's two cents.

Wade Houston
January 8, 2008