What is spam?

Spam, otherwise known as unsolicited e-mail, is usually sent in the form of an advertisement asking you to buy something or visit a website. You may have received e-mails asking you to sign up for a mailing list, telling you to "Click here to make $1000/month, GUARANTEED," or trying to sell you the latest, greatest product. This unsolicited e-mail is known as "Spam Mail," and can sometimes fill up your entire Inbox.

Who sends spam mail?

Spam mail usually comes from companies or individuals that have stuff to sell or websites that they want you to visit. If a company or an individual has access to your e-mail address, you may receive spam mail from them, requesting that you visit their site or buy their product. Usually, a company will make a mailing list with many names on it, and everyone on that list receives the spam mail. If you are receiving spam e-mails and your name is on a mailing list, you may notice that your e-mail address is not on the "To" list at all.

Why am I getting spam mail?

In order for you to receive Spam mail, the sender of the mail must have your e-mail address. Info Link does not give out your e-mail address to anyone. Here are a few ways that your e-mail address can be obtained:

• If you have ever signed up for a mailing list, your e-mail address becomes public. Sometimes mailing lists sell the e-mail addresses on their lists to other people who send out spam

• If you sign up to a mailing list that sends you "Special Offers," your e-mail address may get distributed to many different sites.

• If you've ever purchased anything online and used your e-mail address, the company you bought something from may send you more advertisements. They may also pass on your e-mail to similar companies with similar products.

• If you have an account online or a separate Internet identity (such as an AOL Instant Messenger Screen name, a Yahoo identity, an MSN identity, an ICQ identity, etc.) and you submitted your e-mail to any of those places, your e-mail may become public. Companies can access lists of users on these services and send unsolicited e-mail to you if your name is on this list.

• If you have a website, or if your e-mail address is posted on someone else's website (or anywhere on the Internet), companies may be able to find your e-mail address via a search engine.

Often times, if a person wants to send out a lot of spam e-mails to a lot of different people, they will randomly generate e-mail addresses. For example, if a company notices that netscape.net is a common ending for an e-mail address, they may send the same spam message to john@netscape.net, johnd@netscape.net, johndoe@netscape.net, johnny@netscape.net, etc. Of course, a lot of these e-mail addresses may not exist, but your e-mail address could have been randomly generated.

How do I stop getting spam mail?

If you get numerous e-mails from the same company, you may have the option to unsubscribe from their mailing list. Often times, there's a link at the bottom of the e-mail for you to click on, or a website that you can visit to remove yourself from the mailing list. Sometimes the bottom of the e-mail will give you different instructions for removing yourself from their mailing list.

If you have tried unsubscribing from an e-mail list but still receive e-mails, or if you get a lot of spam e-mails every day, you may want to take advantage of Info Link's Spam Control. Info Link's Spam Control can help you control the amount of spam mail you get every day.

How does Spam Control work?

Info Link is offering a Spam Control service for $1.49/month. Before any message reaches your inbox, the Spam Control service evaluates it for junk-like content, and gives it a escore indicating its probability for being junk email. The service then compares this score with tolerance levels set by your junk filters, and messages exceeding this tolerance are quarantined at your Message Center.

With Info Link's Spam Control service, you can choose how agressive the service filters the spam. We have three different filtering levels for you to choose from when you sign up:

• Low Filtering: Some spam mail will be filtered, but you still have a chance of getting some spam messages in your Inbox

• Medium Filtering: Most spam maill will be filtered.

• High Filtering: If you receive a lot of junk e-mail, high filtering should catch almost all of it. However, with high filtering, you run the risk of actual (not spam) e-mails being marked as spam mail.