There is no question that the problem needs to be dealt with aggressively. Is there any antidote to spam that will make it go away? Companies can filter incoming e-mail and fight it on the local level, but can anything be done to get rid of it once and for all?

For the time being, the outlook is grim but not hopeless. If there is no magic bullet, it is possible to combine a number of approaches to ply spam with a fairly lethal cocktail.

Avoiding Spam

One tactic is to don the spam invisibility cloak. Spammers used to depend on harvested e-mail addresses, which meant spam was sent exclusively to people whose names were gleaned from a mailing list or a Web site or via Usenet. Not so anymore. Spammers are utilizing dictionary attacks to send spam to anyone at a given domain name. They particularly like to target popular Web mail hosts like Yahoo and Hotmail. Using the dictionary method, spammers simply try combinations of popular names.

It is wise to have an unpublished e-mail address, but it is no guarantee against spam. Creating an unusual e-mail address that includes one or more numbers is helpful. "Bob7smith@company.com" is less likely to get spammed than "bobsmith@company.com," for example.

However, such convoluted addresses are not popular with professionals. "The difficulty is getting that to take in businesses," says Philip Slater, sales engineer at Stalker Software. "I don't know how businesses would feel about having a number in an e-mail address. It doesn't look anywhere near as professional as a logical name."

Of course, if such naming conventions were to become common in the business world, spammers likely would find ways to adapt. Another method that is partially effective is to rotate e-mail addresses or even switch accounts on a regular basis. However, that is not a practical plan for e-mail addresses used primarily for business.

Blocking Spam

Anti-spam packages may be the way to go for now, says John Graham-Cumming, research director with the ActiveState Anti-Spam Task Force. "Technological remedies are enough to stem the flow of spam onto a user's desktop or into an enterprise," he told NewsFactor. That does not eradicate the disease, of course, but it masks most of the symptoms. (continued...)

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