Politics OnLine UK

The only way to deal with Spam is to delete it. Most Spam emails offer something called an unsubscribe option. Do not ever respond, far from being an unsubscribe option, responding merely affirms that they have found a live email address, your address will promptly be added to a list of addresses, copied to a CD, which is then sold on to other spammers. By responding in any way you open the floodgates for more.

The Spamhaus Project

With all of Europe set to implement Opt-in legislation by October, Europe has taken the lead in banning spam. But the United States is going in the opposite direction, legislating Opt-out instead of Opt-in and looks set to explode the spam problem many times worse than it is today, incredibly by actually legalizing spam instead of banning it. US Congress is just months away from giving Unsolicited Bulk Email the green light and unleashing the spamming power of 23 Million American businesses onto an Internet which already can not cope with the billions of unsolicited bulk mailings sent by just 200 businesses.

The Spam Definition and Legalization Game

The anti-spam community got caught off guard, not realizing that spammers were trying to redefine the word "spam" in order to confuse law makers and legalize Unsolicited Bulk Email. Out-of-the-blue spammers began touting a new definition, redefining "spam" to mean "that which we do not send". The notoriously pro-spam Direct Marketing Association to everyone's surprise (or not) stated that "Spam" was "only porn and scams, sent fraudulently" and all normal spam was magically "not spam".

http://www.spamhaus.org/

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