Spam refers to unsolicited junk or mass e-mailing. In just a few years, this e-mail nuisance has increased dramatically and it now makes up the largest share of mail in most users’ inboxes. In 2004 alone, spam increased tenfold and it is estimated that about 80 per cent of all e-mail traffic in North America is now spam.
The financial costs of spam are huge. Junk e-mails clog up large amounts of bandwidth on the Internet and the expense of filtering junk mail for Internet Service Providers (ISPs), governments and corporations is substantial.
Spam is pervasive because it is easy and cheap – and it works. Spammers can send out millions of e-mails with one click of a mouse. The cost of sending an e-mail spam is next to nothing, so you don’t need a high response rate to make a profit. And believe it or not, there are actually people out there who reply to spam and purchase the products being flogged. $US12 billion was spent last year on products and services advertised through legitimate spam. So, the problem is not going to go away any time soon.
Most Internet spam can be categorized under marketing pitches, pornography, and scams and hoaxes.
Graphic pornographic spam is one of the most troubling aspects of children’s use of e-mail. The amount and explicitness of porn spam has exploded recently, challenging the ability of adults to protect children from disturbing messages.
Pornographic spam used to arrive with raunchy subject tags, which, though disturbing to read, made them easy to identify and delete. Now, many of these messages come with deceptive subject lines, often containing the receiver’s name. Users are enticed into opening these messages only to find graphic sexual images or links to hard-core porn sites or sexually explicit chat rooms.
Kids are particularly vulnerable to the scams, hoaxes and disturbing messages that can show up in their e-mail accounts. Here are some tips for protecting and educating children and teens about e-mail spam.
- Instruct students to protect their e-mail addresses. This is the most important rule – they should never share their e-mail addresses with someone they don’t know, give them out when chatting online or post them on a Web site. (One way spammers collect e-mail addresses is by using programs called spiders, crawlers and bots. These programs search the Web, collecting e-mail addresses and adding them to spamming lists.)
- Tell students kids, “When in doubt, doubt.” Help them develop a healthy scepticism about any information they receive in e-mail – if it sounds too good to be true, it probably is.
- Double-check any dubious e-mail offers or warnings on one of the many Web sites that track and expose Internet scams, pranks and hoaxes. Urban Legends and Folklore or the Hoaxkill Web site can quickly verify whether or not such e-mail messages are legitimate.
- Suggest students set up a ‘dummy’ e-mail address through a free Web-based service such as Hotmail or Yahoo!. If students must give out an e-mail address on a Web site to receive information they need, they should use the dummy address. This keeps their primary address for correspondence with friends, school and family while avoiding spam.
- Encourage students to use cryptic e-mail addresses that combine letters and numbers. For example, instead of maryjones@...... choose m248ar00lly@......This kind of an address makes it difficult for spammers to randomly find your e-mail account using software that combines people’s first and last names.
- Teach kids to not open e-mail messages from people they don’t know. They should also be instructed not to open an attachment in an e-mail, even from someone they know, unless they have specifically requested it.
- Reinforce the rule that e-mail users should never respond to spam, even if the e-mail message has an ‘unsubscribe’ option. If users respond they are confirming that their e-mail address is accurate.
- Remind them to forward all offensive spam to their Internet Service Provider, who works hard to block junk mail at the server level. (If you are receiving too much junk mail check with your ISP to see if stricter filtering levels can be applied to your account.)
- Encourage them to apply existing e-mail filters in their home computers. Most e-mail programs offer some filtering options and there are many software products on the market that can be used to control spam.
- If students have a free Web-based e-mail such as Hotmail or Yahoo!, there are simple ways to protect their e-mail addresses during the registration process. Make sure they “opt out” of any offers to receive additional services or promotions or to be included in an Internet directory.
- Encourage kids never to respond to a message from a company asking for security information, including passwords, account logons or credit card numbers. No legitimate company would ever send out a request for sensitive information such as this in an e-mail.
Classroom lessons and activities:
Know the Risks
Privacy invasions | Pornography | Cyberbullying | Online predators | Spam | Misinformation | Violent and hateful content | Gambling
