Internet Security Fundamentals - Online Edition
39 Spam (Junk Email)
Every week I get sent hundreds of emails trying to sell me pharmaceuticals from a Canadian pharmacy or welcome credits to various online casinos. My email spam filter funnels them all away, but email spam is still one of the most annoying things about the modern digital age. Criminals have long ago realised that sending millions of unsolicited emails was an easy way to make money and have taken things to a new level, as one in six spam emails now contain links to ransomware. It is important to never reply to a spam email telling them to stop sending you emails, because all you do is validate your email address and confirm that it is live. As a result, you’ll probably end up with even more spam.
Sometimes the email address the spam is supposed to originate from is normally a real address, but often has nothing to do with the spam email, the link embedded in the email is what they want you to click, which once again will just confirm that your email address is in use and you’ll end up with more spam. I’m often asked why the computers sending out spam can’t be stopped. If it were the case of a single machine sending out emails all day that would be easy. The problem is that hundreds of thousands of infected computers work together to form a ‘botnet’ that is controlled by an individual or group. Each infected computer may only appear to be slightly slower than normal, each adding a limited amount of processing power to the network.
Most email systems have some sort of spam filter, or you can add one via various internet security software packages. These filters are not perfect, and some emails will get through. Select these and mark them as spam, improving your spam filter, but don’t follow the link just out of curiosity. More importantly, check your spam filters for ‘false positives’ as sometimes emails you actually want can get blocked. You may have to log into your internet provider’s webmail system to see the spam folder and access the spam settings. If you use an email software client like Outlook or Thunderbird, you will have additional spam settings, but your spam may also be blocked at the webmail level depending on what email system is being used.
Sometimes spam emails are sent from people or organisations abusing the normal affiliate rules, making alarmist false claims in order to give a sense of urgency to get you to click their affiliate links. Take this example, claiming that my device has been infected with 23 viruses.
Just to put everything into context, this network report from the spam filtering service for Microsoft’s Office365 cloud-based email system shows just how big a problem spam is. Over 76% of all its email traffic in the one year was spam! Some reports claim the figure to be as high as 85%. On the worse days, over one billion spam emails a day are being filtered. Just think how much faster the internet would if we didn’t have spam! For most of us, spam is nothing more than an inconvenience, the same way if you receive ten times more junk mail through your letterbox at home than genuine post. For a few that get their email hijacked and then become blacklisted by the spam filtering systems, it’s a major headache. Also, don’t forget that spam is also used as a gateway by criminals to get you to click on a malicious link, or to deliver a malicious attachment, so the problem is not going to go away any time soon.
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