Business E-Mail Spam

What is e-mail 'spam'?

Spam is just unnecessary mail. It's largely soliciting for all kinds of scams for you to send money or for you to forward this e-mail on to ten friends so they can fish for more e-mail addresses.

What is 'bounce back'?

A bounce back for an email, is if you address something to an email address, and the email address is incorrect and it bounces back to you. That can bounce back for a number of reasons, one the email address is incorrect, and that email address doesn't exist, and it is going to come back to you and say that the email address does not exist, basically like sending a letter to the post office and it doesn't have a proper address. It can also bounce back because someone is over their limit in their Inbox size, what a lot of companies do. So if I am over the limit I cannot send or receive email and it is going to bounce back to the original sender of that email.

What is an e-mail 'blacklist'?

If you are blacklisted as a spammer, it's saying to your e-mail server: no longer receive e-mail from this particular e-mail address because I've blacklisted this person, I know they're a spammer and I don't want to receive that e-mail. It is sort of like most phone companies having a unsolicited call did not take calls from this phone number. It's the same thing with the e-mail: do not take e-mail from this particular e-mail address. Spammers have gotten around it by constantly changing their e-mail address. So it is just an easy work around for them but that is blacklisting.

What is 'click-through tracking'?

Click-through tracking is largely used by marketers and they're sending out blanket emails and they're seeing how many people click on "Who wants to buy a new Rolex watch?' By clicking on that you're alerting the marketer of that email, that you're interested in purchasing a new watch. Therefore you're probably going to receive lots of emails about all kinds of watches. That's tracking the click-through on links.

What is e-mail 'fishing'?

“Phishing” is a term used in e-mail to “phish” for other e-mail addresses. So when you forward on to ten friends an e-mail that's a spam e-mail, that spammer captures those ten more names. Spam is really a, it occupies a lot of our time, a lot of people have spam filters in place in corporations to block that. But most people don't realize you also have to train your spam filter. In other words, you have to tell your spam filter what is spam. Some people just think you just plug this in and away it goes and it eliminates all of your spam. That's not necessarily true. A lot of times you have to register what is spam or unregister stuff that's spam.

What is e-mail 'harvesting'?

E-mail harvesting is largely used by spammers. In other words, they will find an e-mail address that exists, let's say at large company. So it's bobjones@companyx.com. And they'll start harvesting names by typing in names to see if that person exists. So they'll start with "Adam Jones", "Adam Smith", "Adam So-and-forth", at that company dot com to see if that e-mail address exists. And as soon as they find one, like adamsmith@companyx.com, then they know that there's a real person behind that e-mail address, and that's e-mail harvesting. They're looking for you to answer or reply or click on a link, and that lets them know that you are there.