Spam Mails

Almost every e-mail user receives many ads, etc., which he / she does not want in the mailbox every day. purposeful e-mail. In the Internet world, all such messages sent without the request of the recipient are called SPAM. Spam was actually a canning brand sold in the UK in the late 1960s. In 1970, the famous comedy program of British television, Monty Phyton, was about the fact that a couple who do not want to eat processed food cannot find anything other than Spam-containing products in a restaurant's menu and have to eat it. Inspired by this vignette, which was very popular at that time, spam messages were started to be called spam.

Spam messages now account for more than 70% of the world's daily Internet mail traffic. Spammers often include Viagra-derived medicines, replicas of famous watch brands, money transfer requests from the exiled king of a troubled African country, etc. send emails that try to convince buyers about matters. It is determined that these emails usually come from far east, eastern Europe and north America. According to the statistics about spam, about a thousand of those who receive spam messages believe and do what is said. This means that there is a huge customer base when spam is sent to millions of people at a time. It has been observed that some spammers caught as a result of various legal proceedings have millions of dollars in this way.

It may not be correct to display spam messages only as fraudulent messages. Many local or foreign people or companies send mass e-mails in order to introduce their products and services to people in the shortest and cheapest way. However, the fact that the messages received in this way are not reliable and that they come in the direction of the recipient in one way or another causes these to be evaluated in the same category.

In e-mail messages, it is possible to technically show the sender's name and address in any way unrealistic. For example, a message with your name and address as the sender at first glance can be sent to any other person without any interest from you or your affiliated institution. Even if the details of the header part of the message can be found and the IP address to which it is sent can be found, expert hackers can connect to other places from where they are located, and from there to another place to send false addressed messages, and their detection can be difficult in practice. For this reason, spammers can easily hide their real identity and location if they want.

The source of nutrition for spammers is the email addresses that will be sent to spam. The more email addresses a spammer has, the more customer potential there is. Therefore, e-mail addresses have also become a commercial value that is bought and sold. Even CDs where hundreds of thousands of e-mail addresses are stored are sold; moreover, their advertisements are made through spam messages.

There are several ways to get e-mail addresses. However, most of the time these addresses are unconsciously delivered to the spammers by the address owners themselves:

1. Sites that require "Free Membership": Many sites from lyrics sites to forums say that they are free to use, but that they only need to subscribe with their email address. If the site does not explicitly state that it will not give anyone the e-mail address it receives and does not use it for spam purposes, it will most likely be stored in a database for sale to spammers. Even some sites use the addresses they collect from users for spam purposes, even if they write this out explicitly.

2. E-Mail redirects (Forwarding): Sometimes by e-mail, messages, jokes, pictures, etc. from an acquaintance. it is very pleasant and the user immediately directs it to their acquaintances. While forwarding, the addresses of those who previously sent in the e-mail also accumulate. These messages, which accumulate like a mountain in the end, fall into the hands of a spammer. This can happen with spyware on any of the recipients' computers, or the recipient himself may even be a person who sells spammers an address for money. Some messages are especially prepared to exploit the emotions of the users. For example, a very popular product is actually carcinogenic; voting to protest websites that are offensive to national and moral values; requests for help to a girl with cancer, actually not at all; Messages that are believed to bring luck and many may be examples.

3. Websites: There are robot software that travel around the world Web sites and collect data. They scan sites and try to find e-mail addresses in them. The character they try to catch the most is the "@" sign. For this reason, in some sites, e-mail addresses are written as "foo (at) falanca.com", so that less robots of this type will be attached.

4. Computer viruses: A virus that enters the person's computer and is designed for this purpose, can collect the addresses in the address book of the e-mail program (Outlook etc.) and even in all accumulated e-mails and reach the spammers over the Internet.

Although it's not a complete formula to protect against spam, taking at least some precautions can be effective in reducing the number of them:

1. To obtain a separate address from a place that gives free e-mail address (GMail, Yahoo, Hotmail, etc.) and to give this as an e-mail address to sites that want to be a member. From time to time, clearing all the mail that has entered and accumulated with this address (which is not expected to be a useful e-mail since this is not your normal address) with a single move.

2. In some written forms, the e-mail address is also asked. If it is not a very trusted place, the above process can be applied to them.

3. To play with the content of the messages you want to forward to other people and to delete other e-mail address headers, if any, and to write the e-mail addresses of the people you will send to the "BCC" line instead of the "To (To)" line. The address of a person who has been e-mailed with BCC (Blind Carbon Copy) will not be seen by other recipients. This will prevent the addresses from spreading.

4. Not to sense your presence to the spammer. Any unsolicited message may contain a phrase like "If you do not wish to receive this message, click here or send a message to it". Complying with and responding to them will not remove the spam domain from that list, as well as informing the spammer that that address is indeed a valid and read address, and this further enhances your place in your spammer's address book.

5. Checking the accuracy of the content before forwarding incoming messages to someone else or a discussion list. For example, the site mentioned in a message claiming to be hostile to Atatürk and in a discourse such as "do not enter the site and increase the counter, click here to protest and send it to those around you" may not actually exist or closed and opened many years ago. Such messages include "hoax", "scam", "con" etc. names are given. Popular search engines can be used to check their accuracy. For example, if the words "hoax checking" are entered in Google, it is possible to reach the sites of "urban legends" circulating by e-mail.

6. Writing e-mail addresses to non-formal methods (such as "foo (-at-) foo (dot) com") on personal websites as much as possible. With this method, automated crawl robots will not understand that this is an email address when they enter your site.

7. Using antispyware and antivirus programs.

8. Not to install or run software that is illegal or whose source is unknown. Most of the password cracker, decrypted, illegal programs and games are Trojans. So their function behind the scenes is somehow damaging. They can also work to send spammers' addresses to you and those in your address book. Since you install and run these programs with your own consent, they are not considered viruses and antivirus programs do not warn you.

While it is easy for a person to understand whether a message is Spam or not, the situation is not the same for the computer. Automatic browsers search for some popular keywords (such as Viagra) in the message, they try to detect whether the name in the "from" line of the message sends messages to an abnormal number of people, they even try to get new keywords and control them by connecting to spam databases installed at certain points around the world. . Spammers, on the other hand, disrupt the keywords to avoid getting caught in these browsers (such as "\ / | A AA GG rA") or write the text in an image file instead of regular text and send it as an attachment, or discover different methods that are unimaginable. This technical war continues mutually. For this reason, no spam browser can filter such messages one hundred percent.

Although the solution to the problem may appear in countries making legal regulations regarding spam, it is equally important that people protect themselves from pests such as viruses and spyware, think twice while giving email addresses to free sites, and not run programs with unknown source.

PHISHING

This word, which is obtained by the disruption of the word "fishing", which means fishing, is used to attempt to gain benefits by sending e-mails to users they see as "fish" and directing them.

These types of e-mail messages try to ensure that users can harm themselves by taking advantage of their ignorance. For example, "The virus will attack on the Internet all over the world at this time. Do not open your computers at that time!" Even if it is a message of its kind, it will not do anything other than deprive you of computer use with your own consent. Or worse, "Attention! If you see a file named falanca.dll under your computer's Windows / System directory, it is infected with a blah virus. Immediately delete that file and shut it down!" An e-mail such as e-mail will be able to make your computer inoperable by deleting a file necessary for your system with your own hands.

Apart from that, it should not be forgotten that no serious organization, especially banks, tries to receive or change your personal information by e-mail. It doesn't write e-mail and say "click here to change your personal information". The link that you want to click in the e-mail with technical tricks can be shown as the address of the real bank. However, when that link is clicked, it can actually redirect to a different address, which is actually an imitation of the real bank's web page, and the user does not notice it. In such cases, the best method is to call the relevant institution and verify the situation.

All kinds of passwords, including credit card numbers, personal information, e-mail, should never be explicitly sent by e-mail. An e-mail passes through many points until it technically reaches its destination. At these points, it is always possible to "listen" the content of the e-mails.

Especially in areas where Wireless Internet is used, it should not be entered in places like banks, credit cards, passwords etc. Regardless of the process should not be carried out. Signals in the air can be heard by third parties. It should not be forgotten that even if the signals are encrypted, all encryption methods are only safe until broken.

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