SPAM
All About SPAM
With the explosive growth of the Internet in recent years, have come some less than desirable developments, such as SPAM. SPAM is unsolicited email that is sent to you without your permission. In some cases, SPAM may take the form of chain letters or funny emails sent to you by a friend. In other more prevalent cases, people exploit the Internet to use its vast community to market their schemes by generating SPAM. Several different categories that SPAM can fit into are:
- Financial offers for loans or refinancing
- Online diplomas
- On-line Prescription Drugs or Herbal Medications
- Personal Enhancement Products or Stimulants
- Pornography
We understand, that for most users, SPAM is a real problem. For one thing, SPAM can fall into the hands of children who have access to the Internet without parental supervision. Because many people generally consider a majority of the SPAM that is sent these days to be obscene, having it fall into the hands of children is undesirable. People of any age have every right to be personally offended by some of these types of uncensored information.
While it may be a bit of a presumption to think that we should attempt to protect Internet users from bogus or illegitimate offers from questionable sources, there is a serious consequence of SPAM has that effects every one who pays for Internet connectivity. That consequence is the price of access. SPAM is not only annoying - it taxes the hardware that facilitates your Internet connection. Service will cost more so that your provider can cover the overhead expenses associated with SPAM, such as:
- Bandwidth
- Extra personnel
- Extra software
- Time spent handling SPAM related issues
In addition, there can also be a cost associated in time and resources that are needed to comply with legal issues stemming from SPAM.
Now knowing that SPAM is more than a minor annoyance, what can be done about it?
What you can do to Combat SPAM
Be aware of what SPAM is.
In addition, the following steps should be taken to help minimize the amount of SPAM that hits your mailbox.
- Convey to friends if email forwarded to you, such as jokes, chain letters and "special offers" are unwanted.
- Be very careful when giving out an email address online. If a privacy policy is not displayed, it is very likely that the site being visited intends to sell email addresses.
- If skeptical, but it's necessary to provide an email address; a suggestion may be to sign up for a free email account that can be used as a alternate to your regular mailbox.
- When particularly offensive email is received, forward the message (including the headers) to spam@telepak.net and we will block that sender from sending email to anyone on our servers.
- NEVER buy a product that is marketed to you using SPAM.
What are WE doing about SPAM?
There are several things being done in order to try and minimize the amount of SPAM that comes through our servers.
First off all, we subscribe to a list that keeps track of major SPAM offenders. This way, we are able to block them from our system before there is a problem to be dealt with.
Secondly, we monitor patterns of mail as they enter or leave our mail system. For instance, if there were 2,000 emails coming in from one user, a flag would be thrown which would prompt a system administrator to investigate. Often, the subject line of the email or the username of the sender note whether or not they are distributing SPAM. After investigation, if it is determined that the user is distibuting SPAM, the system administrator will block that user's domain name so they can no longer send email to a Telepak.net customer. That user will receive an email response explaining the situation and telling them whom to contact if an error has been made.
Another effective method being used is to encourage users of our service to forward any SPAM mail that they receive to our System Administrator (spam@telepak.net). As long as the header of the original email is included, our System Administrators will block that user manually.
Who To Contact
If you have a question, concern or comment regarding SPAM, please fill out the form below:
