What is Spam?

Spam generally refers to unsolicited mass email on the Internet. It is an unwanted intrusion into your Internet experience, a waste of your time and exhausts Internet resources. It is almost as bad as telemarketer phone calls. (At least with Spam you can choose when you deal with them.)

Problems with Spam

Spam on the Internet causes several problems.

• Internet Resources - Every piece of email on the Internet must go through many systems on the way to its destination. Millions of unwanted emails overload systems and slow down the delivery of legitimate email, downloads and web pages.
• ISP Costs – ISP’s must purchase additional equipment to deal with Spam. WestPA.net, for example, has 2 servers that just filter out Spam (and viruses) before the email even gets to our mail server. These servers are expensive, but are necessary to not only help you but to prevent mail delivery problems because of the periodic crushing load of Spam.
• Your Cost - Most users of the Internet have unlimited connect time. But, when you have to spend a lot of time downloading and deleting unwanted email, it wastes your valuable time and it is just plain frustrating!

How They Get Your Address

There are many ways that Spammers get email addresses:

·        Many Spammers use automated programs to collect the email addresses from postings to the newsgroups.

• Many websites require that you become “a member” in order to get further information. The reputable ones have privacy policies that tell you what they can do with the information you provide. Some allow you to opt-out of mailings.
• Some companies will actually sell their “customer” list of information. (EX: You signed up to download a modem driver and they sell your address to Spammers.) You should refuse to do business with any company that does this.

 What WestPA.net is doing to reduce your SPAM

Spam from within WestPA.net is not permitted. We monitor email leaving our servers and will cancel a subscriber rather than allow them to continue Spamming.

WestPA.net has two dedicated servers that scan every incoming email based on numerous methods. All emails are blocked from known Spam sources which currently number in the tens of thousands. Also blocked are emails that meet other criteria related to Spam.

Enormous amounts of Spam (averaging 20,000 to 100,000 per day) are blocked by our two Spam filtration servers, but even they cannot catch everything.

You would think that with all the filtration we do you would not be getting any Spam at all. Unfortunately, if we tightened our filtration more there would be a possibility that “wanted” email could also be rejected. So what we do is mark all "suspicious" emails with a "!!" in the subject line of the email. That not only alerts you that it probably is spam but it allows you to set up your email program to filter it out automatically. Read on......

Finally…What YOU can do to reduce your Spam!

Here is what you personally can do to further reduce Spam in your in-box:

• Only give out your email address to friends, family and trusted parties.
• Never post your email address on any publicly available forum, newsgroup or website.
• If your current email address is already loaded with Spam, get rid of it and set up a new one…. And give it out only to close friends. Need Help? Contact us. We can change your main email address for you.
• Create another email address and use it whenever a web site requires you give an email address. Once that email address starts to accumulate Spam just delete it and set up another one. Here's how!!
• Create a "filter" or "rule" to  BLOCK the Spam sender in your email program. Here is how to do it in several email programs.
• Don’t reply to the link in a Spam to “remove yourself from the list“ because it verifies your email address is a good one they can continue to use.
• Treat your email address as you would your phone number. The more you give out your email the more junk you receive.
• Forward Spam email to spam@westpa.net . Include the FULL header so we can see where it actually came from.

 Anti-Spam Related Help & Links

How to set up another email address at WestPA.net.

How to view and send the Full Headers on an email.

How to set up "filters" or rules" in your email program to trash spam.

• Outlook

• Outlook Express

• Netscape 4.7

How to set your email program to check another email account.

• Outlook Express Wizard