Spam

Introduction / Tips for parents

Spam refers to unsolicited junk or mass e-mailing. In just a few years, this e-mail nuisance has increased dramatically and it now makes up the largest share of mail in most users' inboxes. According to Industry Canada, by the end of 2004, spam made up 80% of global e-mails.

The financial costs of spam are huge. Junk e-mails clog up large amounts of bandwidth on the Internet and the expense of filtering spam is passed on from Internet Service Providers (ISPs) to businesses and consumers.

Spam is pervasive because it is easy and cheap - and it works. Spammers, as they are called, can send out millions of e-mails with one click of a mouse. The cost of sending an e-mail spam is next to nothing, so you don't need a high response rate to make a profit. And believe it or not, there are actually people out there who reply to spam and purchase the products being flogged. A 2004 study from the U.S.-based Direct Marketing Association showed that unsolicited e-mail is worth U.S.$11 billion in yearly sales. So, the problem is not going to go away any time soon.

Most Internet spam can be categorized under marketing pitches, pornography, and scams and hoaxes.

For parents, graphic pornographic spam is one of the most troubling aspects of their children's use of e-mail. The amount and explicitness of porn spam has exploded recently, challenging the ability of parents to protect their children from disturbing messages.

Pornographic spam used to arrive with raunchy subject tags, which, though disturbing to read, made them easy to identify and delete. Now, many of these messages come with deceptive subject lines, often containing the receiver's name. Users are enticed into opening these messages only to find graphic sexual images or links to hard-core porn sites or sexually explicit chat rooms.

Tips for parents

Protect your computer. Because spam is a growing source of computer viruses it is important that you use and regularly update anti-virus and anti-spam software. Make sure you also have the extra protection of a firewall.

Kids are particularly vulnerable to the scams, hoaxes and disturbing messages that can show up in their e-mail accounts. Here are some tips for protecting and educating children and teens about e-mail spam:

• Instruct your kids to protect their e-mail addresses. This is the most important rule - they should never share their e-mail addresses with someone they don't know, give them out when chatting online or post them on a Web site. (One way spammers collect e-mail addresses is by using programs called spiders, crawlers and bots. These programs search the Web, collecting e-mail addresses and adding them to spamming lists.)
  
  
• Tell your kids, "When in doubt, doubt." You need to help them develop a healthy scepticism about any information they receive in e-mail - if it sounds too good to be true, it probably is.
  
  
• Double-check any dubious e-mail offers or warnings on one of the many Web sites that track and expose Internet scams, pranks and hoaxes. Urban Legends and Folklore or the Hoaxkill Web site can quickly verify whether or not such e-mail messages are legitimate.
  
  
• Suggest to your kids that they use a 'made-up' e-mail address on sites where an address is required before they can access the site's activities.
  
  
• Help them set up a 'dummy' e-mail address through a free Web-based service such as Hotmail or Yahoo!. If your kids must give out an e-mail address on a Web site to receive information they need, they should use the dummy address. This keeps their primary address for correspondence with friends and family while avoiding spam.
  
  
• Make sure your kids have a cryptic e-mail address consisting of a combination of letters and numbers. For example, instead of maryjones@..., choose m248ar00lly@.... This kind of an address makes it difficult for spammers to randomly find your e-mail account using software that combines people's first and last names.
  
  
• Teach your kids to not open e-mails from people they don't know. They should also be told to never open an attachment in an e-mail, even from someone they know, unless they have specifically requested it.
  
  
• Reinforce to your kids that they should never respond to spam, even if the e-mail message has an 'unsubscribe' option. If users respond they are confirming that their e-mail address is accurate. (For the same reason, never enable your "I'm on vacation" notification in your e-mail program.)
  
  
• Forward all offensive spam to your Internet Service Provider, who works hard to block junk mail at the server level. If you are receiving too much junk mail check with your ISP to see if stricter filtering levels can be applied to your account.
  
  
• Use your computer's e-mail filters. Most e-mail programs offer some filtering options and there are many software products on the market that can be used to control spam.
  
  
• If your kids have a free Web-based e-mail such as Hotmail or Yahoo!, there are simple ways to protect their e-mail addresses during the registration process. Make sure they "opt out" of any offers to receive additional services or promotions or to be included in an Internet directory.
  
  
• Encourage your kids never to respond to a message from a company asking for security information, including passwords, account logons or credit card numbers. This practice, which is known as phishing, involves sending bogus e-mails to customers of legitimate businesses in order to extract personal financial information. No legitimate company would ever send out a request for sensitive information such as this in an e-mail. Report any incidents of phishing e-mails to your ISP and the company that is being misrepresented.