Spam

Neurotic I may be. Inundated by spam I certainly am!

You may or may not know that there are programs called webbots (web robots) which continually scan web pages looking for email addresses, names and phone numbers. When these are found they are sent home to base where they are processed into emailing lists. Many of these are just irritating and become the electronic version of the double glazing telesales people. However, some are not so innocuous and are passed on to depraved individuals who try to entice the recipients into buying porn, nonexistent lottery wins or body enhancing drugs and prosthetics. Many of these emails are unbelievably objectionable.

It is therefore the policy of this website never to carry email addresses or telephone numbers in a form which can be detected by webbots. Wherever these were found on old pages they have been removed.The website is now completely free of harvestable links and email addresses. If you wish to contact any member of the committee, please look up their email address in your SSC Year Book or use the club secure contact page.

If you are already suffering from spam, here are some tips:

Set up more than one email alias and keep one which you only give to friends. Use another alias for instances where an online form asks for your email then, if this becomes abused, you can abandon it and send all mail for that address to oblivion.
Use the spam filter provided by most Internet Service Providers.
Use an email client such as Mozilla Thunderbird which has an excellent heuristic spam filter.
Never, ever open an attachment to an email unless you know who it is from and are expecting it. Your friend's email address book could have been hijacked by a virus and the attachment could be that virus trying to get into your PC. If in doubt, contact your friend to check that the attachment is bona fide - or just bin it!
Never reply to spam email. Don't hit the 'unsubscribe' button in the mail. All this does is confirms to the sender that your email address is valid and in use. This makes it all the more valuable.
Don't be fooled by emails purporting to be from your bank and checking your details. No reputable bank will ever check account numbers, pins etc online. These are called phishing emails and are a con.
There's no such thing as a freebie in email-land. The promise of large sums of money from a lottery win (you never entered) or from a Nigerian crooked civil servant (just send £many for legal fees to expedite the transfer of this good fortune to your account) are, again, cons.

It's a sad, sicko world we live in :-(

Richard Walker, March 2006