The following article contains information about junk email (Spam).

What is Spam? – Spam is a term that describes the sending of unsolicited commercial email to many email addresses. 

How does it work? - Often Spam companies will generate an email list of thousands of random email addresses. This is called “Blind Spam” in which they will send out an email to all of these addresses in the hopes that some of the email addresses are active ones. The worst thing you can do when you receive one of these emails is to open them, reply to them, or try to remove yourself from their list by following their removal instructions included in their email. If you try to remove yourself from their email list often Spammers will know that they have a valid active email address – and in this case they may leave you on their email list.

You may also receive what initially looks like Spam but is actually email sent to you as a result of your giving out your personal email address over the Internet. Some examples of locations on the Internet that might request an email address are surveys, forms, newsgroups, chat rooms, list groups, or subscriptions among others.

Unfortunately there is not a 100% foolproof way stop the flow of junk E-mail (Spam).  There are however, several steps to take in order to help prevent receiving spam.

Never randomly give out your personal email address on the Internet. Often but not always, companies that request your email address will use it for sending you junk email in the future. Also, when you do receive Spam do not open it. Some Spammers have cleverly added specific programming codes in the emails that notify them as soon as one of their emails are opened. If you do open their Spam they will know that your email address is an active one.

To prevent yourself from becoming added to additional Spam lists, avoid using your real e-mail address while posting in newsgroups or chat rooms because many mass mail programs simply strip the e-mail addresses out of messages and store them for future use.

Some people divert all their Spam to one email address. They create an additional web based email address, which is used solely for giving out on the Internet. This web based email address is the recipient of only Spam, while their primary personal email address is not given out at all on the Internet.

There are also methods in your email program to block Spam that contain certain Subject Lines such as common Spam keywords like “HOME LOAN” and “EARN $$.” However, you need to be careful when implementing this procedure, as you do not want to block potential subject lines that might be from friends such as "Hey!" or "Look at this!" For more information about blocking Spam via subject lines in your email program please visit Pacific Online’s support page at www.pon.net/support.

Pacific Online does have Spam filtering on our Mail server, which are used to help stem the flow of unsolicited blind Spam emails. 

For additional information regarding Spam as well as other ideas to protect your personal privacy please visit the very informative web site: http://junkbusters.com

Spam takes many forms, but in summary it is unsolicited (unwanted) emails sent out via mass mailing schemes. Spam is basically the electronic form of the multitude of advertisements you get in the Sunday newspaper. Spam takes all shapes and forms and can be anything from the simple to the outrageous, to the subtle to the downright obnoxious. The problem with catching Spam is that anyone with the proper program and a mailing list can send out Spam, and Spammers are becoming more and more knowledgeable and adept at finding ways around the many anti-Spam methods ISP's such as Pacific Online use.

There are excellent organizations and companies on the Internet who highly oppose Spam. These organizations also stop additional Spam using lists commonly known as "black-lists". A listing of blacklists is available here. Blacklists are lists that contain ISP's and organizations that actively send Spam and other unsolicited emails. Pacific Online uses orbz to filter out Spammers and other email abuse - this does significantly decrease the amount of Spam. Please bear in mind that we are trying our best to prevent Spam for our customers, as it not only effects you but also effects our servers and our business email addresses, as well as our own personal email addresses.

Surely you have gotten at least some Spam in the past; some users receive more Spam then others, some do not receive hardly any at all. You are probably reading this article thinking "When are they going to tell me how to get rid of Spam completely!?" The unfortunate thing is there really is not an easy, cure-all method for stopping the Spam. However, we can give you a few tips and hints on how to reduce it and perhaps even stop Spam from reaching your email box.

The first and most important tip on stopping Spam; the one point, as technicians we cannot stress enough, is to not give out your email address to anyone you do not specifically know and trust. By know and trust we mean do not give your email address out to any site on the Internet or to any person or company. Give your email out to friends, family, etc but only to those who will guard your email address, as you would guard it. Sure, it sounds drastic and perhaps even a bit selfish, but from the rate of Spam coming into our servers and the ease of picking up a virus from an email, it is critical that you guard against who gets your email address. Think of your email address as your own home address. You would not give your home address to any stranger on the street, nor would you display your home address on television or other mass media without a good reason for doing so. Just as easily as someone with a crowbar and the knowledge of your home address can break into your house, a person with your email address can also do a variety of bad things such as send you unwarranted Spam & viruses. We do not mean to scare you with this article; we simply mean to strike home the point of the importance of guarding your email address.
   
Lastly, if you are still receiving unsolicited email, Pacific Online has available an Abuse Email. Please forward Spam to abuse@pon.net so that a Pacific Online technician can research each incident of Spam.

Sincerely,

The Pacific Online Staff