Because unsolicited mail is cheap to send and potential profits are high, only strict legal enforcement can stop spam.  The Coalition Against Unsolicited Commercial Email, or CAUCE notes that “Today, much of the spam volume is sent by career criminals and malicious hackers who wont stop until they are all rounded up and put in jail”.

All the countries that represent the European Union have passed laws that specifically target spam and Article 13 of the European Union Directive on Privacy and Electronic Communications (2002/58/EC) provides that the these countries will “take appropriate measures to ensure that unsolicited communications for the purposes of direct marketing are not allowed either without the consent of the subscribers concerned or in respect of subscribers who do not wish to receive these communications, the choice between these options to be determined by national legislation”.

Legislative efforts are either ineffective or counter-productive for example, the CAN-SPAM Act of 2003 stipulates that each message has to include “opt out” measures, but it is widely believe that opt out messages are unwise and all they do is tell the spammer that they have in actual fact reached an active email.  So, opt out is counter productive in the sense that recipients who are aware of the risks of opting out will decline to do so and that opt out message will provide spammers with the information they are looking for.

Ethical email marketing is the way forward. By only sending newsworthy and solicited mail, you can help in the fight against email marketing's poor reputation and a great way to ensure that your campaign runs smoothly is to bring in a reputable internet marketing agency to manage it for you.

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While those who administer internet systems are responsible for dealing with abuse of the net, they are not responsible for dealing with abuse on the net, so while they will tackle spam quite vehemently, they prefer to have the legal system deal with issues such as libel or infringement to trademarks.

Illicit, or unlawful email marketing actually predates legitimate email marketing where is was not allowed to use the internet for commercial purposes, this has resulted in today’s uphill battle by those who are trying to establish themselves as a bona fide business in the email marketing industry.

It is difficult to distinguish between legitimate and spam email marketing because many spammers present themselves as legitimate operators and because of political groups pressurising legislatures to legalise certain activities which internet operators consider spamming.  For example, sending ‘opt out’ unsolicited emails.  Also, the sheer volume of spam has confused some users who cannot separate spam from legitimate emails.

One method proving effective and in favour of legitimate email marketing companies is to add a double opt in which requires that the recipient manually confirm their request for information by clicking on a unique link and then typing in a unique identifying code.

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It is imperative to prevent email spam and thankfully there are techniques available for both end users and administrators to make use of.  Some are embedded into software or products in a bid to ease the burden, but no one technique is a complete solution though.  The trade off is between incorrectly rejecting legitimate emails and not rejecting spam at all.

There are four broad categories involved in anti spam techniques which are

1.    those that require an action
2.    those that can be automated by administrators
3.    those that can be automated by senders
4.    those that are used by researchers and by law enforcement

How is spam detected?

IT is a balance between false negatives and false positives.  A false negative is where spam has slipped through filters and lands in a mailbox and a false positive is where a desired email has been blocked.  It is imperative to balance these two in order to create a successful anti spam system.

A very popular method of detecting spam is in the content of the email, detecting keywords often used in spam, and can be very accurate, but they can be also make mistakes such as detecting only part of a word.  Content also does not determine if the email conforms to the two key elements of spam which are unsolicited or bulk emails.

One of the most popular methods to detect spam is through list of IP addresses of known spammers or zombie spammers called the DNS Blacklist.  In fact some blacklists actually make use of spam traps in order to catch spammers.

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Spambots collect email address off the internet, off websites, news groups, special interest groups and even chat rooms. Because email addresses have a distinctive format, Spambots can often easily spot them. Processes are underway to outlaw them.

However, there are some clever people who are creating programs in order to foil Spambots; one such technique is known as address munging. Address munging deliberately modifies email addresses so that while humans can decode it, Spambots can’t.

However with the advent of these programs has come the evolution of sophisticated Spambots that are capable of recovering email addresses from character strings that appear to have been munged.

But the fight continues and methods to combat Spambots are still being created. Ethical email marketers are against Spambots because they give email marketing a bad name and send so much unsolicited mail that “real” emails can get tarred with the same brush.

Another attempt to foil Spambots is the email blocker or email filter, but they can at times prevent legitimate emails from reaching a subscriber who wants it. This can however be circumvented by the recipient who can generate their own list of specific email addresses the blocker should ignore. This is called a whitelist.

Forum Spambots troll the internet, looking for guestbook’s, blogs or forum where they can submit a spam link to the web forms it find there. The easiest way to foil these Spambots is to install a mail server on the host, thus enabling email activation.

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Now, contrary to what you might think, renting an email list is far from having direct access to that list yourself. Buying might also not be your best option and owning takes some time before it comes into play. So how do you go about this email business the right way to benefit you and your cause?

Getting it right

Renting email lists is not a bad option but you do need to be wary. You will never see the list yourself and will not have access to it. You will be handing your advertisement over to the owner of the list. They will then send out your email advertisements for you. That is what renting entails. You need to be sure to choose a reputable email list rental company. You must prevent having your name smeared in the mud.

Your business can’t be associated with illegal emailing and spamming practices. Buying is generally a very bad idea unless you make sure of your facts. The dangers of spamming could mean that list is tainted with the addresses of hundreds, if not thousands, of unwilling recipients.

Building your own list from scratch is your other option, but that only occurs when you build-up a data-base of recipients. This is painstaking and time consuming but ultimately rewarding as you need your recipients to opt-in to the campaign.

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