Spam is the electronic equivalent of Junk Mail.   Email sent out by one person or company to many recipients, sometimes millions at once.

The SkyBeam has a very effective Spam filter. This filter will, with your help, greatly reduce your Spam. See the Postini link on the right hand side of that page, for how to help our Spam filter help you. (SkyBeam Customers Only.)

In the early years of the Internet, Spam was just companies trying to sell their legitimate products or services. In recent times, Spam has mutated into some very objectionable and distasteful promotions. Lately some Spam is even in Russian and other languages that most recipients can't even read.

Why would someone waste their time sending out Spam in a language most folks can't read, or send promotions for a product or service no one wants?
Most current spammers are just simple folks who have been duped into buying into a "Get Rich Quick Scheme". Like the ads in the back of magazines that, for over a hundred years, have been promoting stuffing envelopes for fun and profit, or say, “I made a ton of money. Send me some dollars and I'll tell you my money making secrets.” These scumbags have dusted off their old scams and modernized them for the Internet age. They sell some poor, “stupid”, soul a list of email addresses and a bogus product or service to resell, then with big dollar signs in his or her eyes, the target of the scam sends out their “money making” Spams for a few weeks. By the time the “mark” wises up to the scam and quits his useless Spamming, a thousand others have taken the bait and start their Spamming for a few weeks.

Shouldn't there be a law?   No!   Laws can't make stupid people smart, or greedy people contented. Several states have already passed laws against Spam. These laws don't work any better than laws against gun ownership that tries, miserably, to keep guns out of the hands of criminals. Committed Spammers simply move to another state or country. Get rich quick dupes don't know any better and will give it a try for a few weeks or months, and as stated above, more weekend Spammers will come online faster than the disillusioned ones drop by the wayside.

What really needs to happen is a better education for the world's population.   Of course if this could actually be achieved, it would spell the demise of gambling casinos, state lotteries, diet books/pills, the Art Bell show, and probably a few governments.

The DOs & DON'Ts of Your Email

DON'T use your SkyBeam email address for any online registration, signups, or purchases. Doing so will most assuredly put your email address on many Spam lists.

DO get a free, disposable, Email account. An email account with one of the many free email services will give you a place for all the unavoidable Spam to pile up. When your free email account starts receiving too much Spam, just abandon it, and get another one.

DO tell all your friends and relatives NOT to mass mail you jokes, stories, warnings, etc. Mass mailings are when the sender puts more than one email address on one out-going message at a time. We've all seen those messages from someone who believes he is helping by sending a warning, about some aspect of life or computers to everyone in his address book. The top half of the message contains dozens of email addresses. Eventually, as this warning or joke gets passed around the Internet, it will fall into the hands of a Spammer, and they will harvest the addresses.

The Power of Tens Someone intending to do a little good for you and a few of their friends puts your email address, as well as ten others on the email, and sends it on its way.

You and the nine others receive this dire warning that contains all ten email addresses. You and the nine others add ten of your friends and family to the warning, and pass it on.

Each one of those hundred recipients do what you did, and pass it on to ten new recipients each. (Remember: Each one of those thousand emails has your email address in it!)

In just a few generations, your email address has been passed on to tens of thousands of perfect strangers. One or two of which might be a Spammer. Or just nosy.

We recommend that you be very selective as to who you give your new SkyBeam email address. If in doubt, give them your free-mail address instead. You should include something like the following in your email to friends and relatives when informing them of your new SkyBeam email address:

Greetings to all our online friends and contacts. We have recently connected to The SkyBeam's wireless high-speed Internet, at www.TheSkyBeam.com   Our email address has changed to:

YourNewAddress@theskybeam.com

Please change our entry in your address book.

SPECIAL NOTICE: Please don't include this new address in any mass mailings. If you need to send us a warning, joke, or any other thing you think everyone you know should read, please send it as an individual separate email.

For more about mass mailings, and why they are a bad thing, please see www.theskybeam.com/spam.html

Thank you for updating your address book, and your help in reducing our Spam load.

You can Copy & Paste the above into your messages to your contacts, and change the email address to reflect your new address.

A mass mailing, especially for notification of change of email addresses is very useful, and if done properly can eliminate the risk of exposing those you have sent to, to the Spammers. Simply put your own email address in the To: field, and all the recipients in the Bcc: field. (Not the Cc: field.) The Cc: "Courtesy Copy" field will expose all the email addresses. The Bcc: "Blind Courtesy Copy" field is invisible to all recipients, including Spammers.

Will responding to the Spam help in any way?   Probably Not!   Clicking the "Reply" button and venting your spleen to the Spammer may make you feel a little better, but will usually do nothing, or even be read. Most Spammers either use a fake email address, that will simply bounce your response, or they use an account that is never read. Those Spams that have a link at the bottom that promisses to remove you from the list, are in actuality, a way for the Spammer to assure he has a live human at the end of that email address. Asking to be removed will only get you on yet more Spam lists.

What Can I Do About Spam?   If you are a SkyBeam customer, keep your Postini settings properly adjusted for your needs. If you are not one of our customers, check with your Internet Service Provider, "ISP", and ask them to install a Spam filter.

Don't send mass mailings to friends and relatives. Don't pass on those "IMPORTANT WARNINGS". After all, nearly all of those types of warnings are bogus!   Don't pass on those "Pass This On & You Can Win..." junk mailings. ALL of those are illegitimate!   Don't pass on those "How to save yourself from a heart attack" and other "helpful" junk. They too are just so much snake oil.

Send everything one address at a time!   If you must send a mass mailing, use the Bcc: field, as explained above.

If you receive a mass mailing you think everyone is just dying to read, and it has a long list of email addresses, trim all the old addresses out of it. And while you are at it, you might consider cleaning up the text a little; remove all those blasted carets  "<<<<<"   from the lines, before you send it on. And you might consider proofreading and cleaning up the syntax and composition. Most of these things are so poorly written as to be laughable.   Remember, most people have already received ten copies of it long before you did.

Check The Urban Legends Reference Pages at Scopes and put the subject line, or topic of the warning or help, that you have received in their search field, and see what they have to say about this "pearl of wisdom".   Checking the validity of something, before you pass it on, not only will help reduce the amount of garbage on the net, but it will keep you from looking the fool.

"Better to keep your mouth shut and be thought a fool than to open it and remove all doubt." - Mark Twain

If you find this a little help in your travels of the Internet, and think others could also benefit, feel free to send this web page to your friends and contacts, but obviously NOT via a mass mailing.