How Do I Unsubscribe From Spam?
The very short answer to the question of how to unsubscribe from spam is that you can't. Spam, by its very nature, is unrequested and often unwanted email. Unsubscribe links found in spam email may, if you're lucky, simply be completely bogus and lead to a non existent page or have no effect. However, if you are unlucky then clicking the link could actually make your problem much worse. Some spam lists use the licking of this link to signify that your email address is indeed manned. Once they discover this it is highly probable that they will send more email or even sell your email to other spammers and advertisers.
What Can Be Done To Beat Spam?
So, if spam unsubscribe links can make matters worse, what can be done? This is a good question but not one with a simple answer that you want to hear. The fact is that once spammers have your email address they will relentlessly send you a barrage of these unwanted emails in the hope that you will click just one of the links and purchase a product from one of the website. As we mentioned, clicking the unsubscribe link is more likely to mean more emails. The best solution is to use anti spam software or an anti spam service.
Anti Spam Software And Services
Anti spam software and services do not, as such, remove your email from the spammer's list. However, they can block spam from finding its way to your Inbox. In the case of challenge and response email services they can almost completely eradicate the problem, although some genuine users may feel alienated by this type of service. Anti spam software, while typically highly effective, is now inexpensive and one of the best tools available to help in the seemingly endless fight against unlawful spammers. Anti spam software uses a number of techniques and technologies to help combat this problem.
Black Lists
There are a number of different lists and names for the lists that anti spam software uses. A black list is a list of known spam email addresses and software uses this list in order to block any email received from the relevant emails, IP addresses, or even entire domains. As far as this technique goes it is highly effective, but new email addresses are being used all the time and until these become part of a standard black list it is down to you to manually add them to your own black list.
White Lists Or Safe Lists
A white list is a list of known good senders. Usually, when you respond to an email or you have the details of an email address within your contact book these addresses can be considered safe. Some software will use this knowledge to automatically draw up a list of good senders. Any email addresses on this list will be able to freely send you emails without being quarantined or removed. A white list may also be known as a safe list.
Keyword Scanning
Keyword scanning has long been an effective method of preventing spam. Software scans every incoming email your receive and compares the contents of the email with an extensive list of known spam keywords. If any, or a number, are found then the email is believed to be spam. In some cases this can lead to the automatic quarantining of the email, or you may receive a warning and be asked to verify the authenticity of the email content. Unfortunately, some keyword scanning software can be over zealous in its approach and quarantine genuine emails for what may seem like no good reason. Ink cartridges, watches, medication, and sex are all known spam topics. If you receive a genuine email containing any of these keywords it could potentially be deleted.
What Is Heuristic Filtering?
Heuristic filtering is a highly intelligent form of scanning emails for spam. As well as combining the use of safe lists and black lists with keyword scanning it will also learn from your actions. When the software is first installed it will “watch” how you interact with certain emails. When you mark an email as junk the software will note down header information such as the topic, sender's address, and keywords found in the content of the email. After it has had the opportunity to observe your interaction over a reasonable period of time it will then begin to take the same actions as you yourself would take with a new email.
Spam And Effective Anti Spam Techniques
Spam is a major problem for many of us. Inboxes and even entire email servers can quickly become clogged up with useless and irrelevant spam emails. Unsubscribe links are dangerous in themselves because they are sometimes used to confirm the validity of your email leading to a greater number of spam emails. Anti spam software is the best solution in the fight against these emails and, of the various types of software, applications that use a combination of techniques along with heuristic filtering tend to provide the best possible results.