How to Stop Spam

This is a summary article. We also have a more detailed article about spam available.

Any consideration of internet safety for kids must include a look at spam. Spam represents the most common way that inappropriate materials arrive in the family home. Any concern for children's online safety needs to address how to ensure safe email for kids and for the whole family.

What is spam?

Spam is email sent to you that you didn't ask for - usually advertisements for services that don’t interest most people, in particular, for medications and products of an adult nature.

How do spammers get email addresses?

Spammers buy lists of email addresses from companies that sell them. They typically come from online or offline forms you have filled in, or from reading your email address automatically from places you may have published it, such as forums or blog comments. Occasionally they may come from individual's address books that have been compromised. Lastly, spammers often use random email addresses in the hope of finding a real address. Kids email addresses are indistinguishable from adult accounts and so just as likely to be sold on.

What methods are used to try to stop spam?

Success in avoiding spam generally comes from combining a number of measures. The most popular methods are:

Spam detection software

Software running either on your computer or on your mail providers server can analyze mail to try to spot spam. Some of these systems can be taught what "spam" and "not spam" messages look like and further improve their accuracy.

Blacklists

Blacklists are lists of senders who should be rejected. This is particularly effective at preventing online bullying. However, this is a particularly ineffective technique because spammers long ago started to use a variety of email addresses from which to send their email.

Realtime Blacklists

Realtime blacklists are special lists which are constructed by groups of people and made available to share. Incoming mail is checked against these lists.

Greylisting

Greylisting involves deferring incoming messages. Spammers are unlikely to try again but real email senders will.

Challenge and response

This works by replying to all unknown senders with a message to which they must reply. Once they reply, which a spammer will rarely ever do, the original message is delivered. It is effective at stopping spam but has various problems associated with it.

Moderated email

Moderated email is a technique whereby incoming mail is validated by a person acting as the moderator. The best email for kids will use some aspect of parental controls as part of the moderation process. Its success depends on the efficiency of the mechanism used for approving or rejecting emails. SAFEnSOUNDmail uses flexible levels of moderation to better tackle this problem.

Recommended anti-spam measures

The most successful method of blocking spam is to use a multi-layered approach as used by SAFEnSOUNDmail consisting of several of the above techniques. A good approach must not only block as much spam as possible, but also allow through legitimate emails and take the minimum amount of manual effort. A comprehensive solution might look like this (some of these are defined only in our detailed article about spam):

Additionally, in the cases where avoiding spam is particularly important, such as for children, using a final layer of moderated email is strongly advisable.

This multi-layered approach is that taken by SAFEnSOUNDmail. The vast majority of spam is rejected by the system and generally speaking only legitimate email is passed to the parent for moderation. In the unlikely event that a spam mail does get through the initial filtering, it's a simple task for the parent to reject it (indeed, if they do nothing and don't explicitly approve the message, it's never delivered to the child).

Other techniques for avoiding being targeted by spammers

Avoid publishing your email address. Though it won't stop all spam, if nobody has your email address it will receive far less spam. Avoid publishing it on websites, blogs, forums and suchlike. Be careful when signing up for things online - check the privacy policy to make sure they won't sell your email address to a spammer.

When children sign up to kids websites, it is good practice for them to form the habit of adding trusted sources to their whitelists.

It is often recommended that you shouldn't reply to spam. However, this is something of a fallacy in some respects - the vast majority of spam messages don't have legitimate reply addresses anyway. However, there is a good reason not to reply to spam messages and that is that some of the more sophisticated anti spam systems, including that used by SAFEnSOUNDmail, will automatically whitelist anybody to whom you send email.

Similarly, the suggestion that you should avoid using the "unsubscribe" mechanism often included in mass emails because it validates your address to the spammer is also common. This isn't bad advice but it needs to be applied selectively. If the email is a true spam message, from a spammer, then you should not try to follow the unsubscribe instructions as the spammer is unlikely to honour your request to not receive further spam. However, if the sender is a legitimate business, the chances are they will stop sending you spam if you follow the instructions.

While there is no guaranteed way to avoid all spam, taking sensible precautions and using a sophisticated email provider like SAFEnSOUNDmail is a simple and effective way to protect your family email from spam and unwanted emails.