What is it?

SPAM is the general term used for unwanted and/or unsolicted email. All those emails you get about refinancing your house, buying cheap drugs from Canadian pharmacies, some guy in some remote part of the world that needs your help gaining access to millions of dollars - these are all types of SPAM.

What can I do about it?

Well the first thing to do is be very cautious giving out your email address. If you have to provide a company your email address expressly tell them do not add it to their marketing database. Marketing databases get sold to anyone willing to pay a few dollars. If you do have to provide an email address go to Gmail.com, Yahoo.com, or any number of other sites that offer free email addresses. Use this free email account address instead of your "real" email address. Then once or twice a month scan that account for real emails and delete the rest. This will help minimize the amount of SPAM you get in your inbox.

Second, consider using a SPAM filtering program. Numerous programs exist to help make sure you only get the messages you really want. Each works a little different but most do a very good job at limiting the amount of unwanted messages in your inbox. Fees run from "free" to monthly or annual subscription amounts. If your business has a domain with multiple email addresses you may wish to consider a domain level email filtering product. We offer a service for $25/mnth that filters up to 10,000 messages per day for an entire domain. If you get more than 10,000 message per day we can work with that also.

Third, if you have a website or your contact information is listed on any website; do not include your email address. Instead have a button created that says email me and require visitors to click it and fill out a form which is then emailed to you. There are plenty of programs available that run through websites and mine email addresses. Any good website developer can help you with this - I would not be one of those :)

Why is it called SPAM?

Here is a link to one site giving an explanation as to how the term got started.

http://www.cybernothing.org/faqs/net-abuse-faq.html#2.4

Since it makes mention of Monty Python I am inclined to believe it - geeks love Monty Python (me included!)

Have a nice day! :-)