How to stop or reduce Spam Emails

One can be as happy as he wants. But the same statement may not apply to Internet users, thanks to spam emails. Although there is no foolproof way to stop spams, we can reduce the amount of spams by being a bit careful.

The first thing before attacking is to understand the enemy and its strength. What is spam? We may call it junk mail, spam or whatever else you fancy, its property remains to be the same: it's unsolicited and it's useless. Most often than not, spams get generated from bots, viruses and automated mailing lists. In the rare cases, they are also caused my human users which, quite often, happen to be the most irritating kind of spam generators. It is observed that around 80% of the email messages exchanged are spams!. How disgusting!!

Take, for example, an incident which happened recently. One of my friends sent a mail to a large number of recepients. But one of those recepients was not an intended person. That person used Reply All and asked my friend to remove him from his mailing list. Well, you can guess what happened. All of us got the reply email which was intended only for my friend. Thankfully the chapter ended there itself. To get a hint of what can happen in such cases, see how to look stupid.

What is the solution for this? It's simple: We have to be in the right mind and know when to use Reply and when to use Reply All. As a rule of thumb, we should NEVER use Reply All unless we are 100% sure about what we are doing.

Instead of relying on others, another way to prevent such incidents is to be cautious enough not to disclose the email addresses to the recepients at all. It can be easily done by adding the addresses to BCC (Blind Courtesy Copy or Blind Carbon Copy) field instead of TO or CC fields. Unfortunately BCC field ranks top among the most obscure and unused standard feature of email!

The features discussed above are only for mails generated by humans. What about those spam emails which get generated by malwares and bots? Such spam emails are mainly the means for advertising products. More the number of recepients, more the number of customers. But how do they get the email ids? It's directly or indirectly by ourselves. We may have inadverently given our email ids to some website or it might have gone there by one of our friends. We need to be extra careful if we want to be at a distance from spams.

Also it is a good idea to remove the sender's information while forwarding an email to others. It not only protects your privacy, but also prevents any potential spammer to use the email addresses in the body of the mail to be used for unsolicited mailings.

Virtually there is no way to stop such emails if you are already receiving them. Precaution is better than cure is the mantra to be followed here. When we give out our email ids to some third party web sites, we need to be extra careful. Never give your email id to any unknown public mailing lists. You never know who shares your email id with spammers!

Another way to detect and filtering out spams is to give plus or minus addressing. You can use different tags for different mailing lists and if you start receiving spams, you can come to know who shared your email address with the spammers. Read more about spam control by plus addressing technique here.

Is that all? Not quite. One of the most common mistakes done by many people is to use their email addresses in their signatures. You may think that is going to make you more famous in the online world. But remember, for one genuine email you get by displaying your email id there, you start receiving hundreds of spams. Never ever make the mistake of putting email id in web pages, forums or social networking sites. Also, remember never to give away your friends' email ids to sites which ask you to invite them to join it. You may think you are being courteous to your friends by giving their email ids but, in reality, you are making them victims of spam emails.

Last but not the least, as a rule of thumb, don't forward any email message if it explicitly asks you to do so! Stopping spams may not be in our hands, but reducing them really is!

Additional Rules in Cricket

My friend got a mail like this:

After watching the test match, I feel some rules have to be incorporated by ICC to give the other teams a perfect clarification:

1. Ricky Ponting - (THE TRULY GENUINE CRICKETER OF THE CRICKET ERA AND WHOSE INTEGRITY SHOULD NOT BE DOUBTED) should be considered as the FOURTH UMPIRE. As per the new rules, FOURTH UMPIRE decision is final and will over ride any decisions taken by any other umpires. ON-FIELD umpires can seek the assistance of RICKY PONTING even if he is not on the field. This rule is to be made, so that every team should understand the importance of the FOURTH UMPIRE.


2. While AUSTRALIAN TEAM is bowling, If the ball flies anywhere close to the AUSTRALIAN FIELDER(WITHIN 5 metre distance), the batsman is to be considered OUT irrelevant of whether the catch was taken cleanly or grassed. Any decision for further clarification should be sought from the FOURTH UMPIRE. This is made to ensure that the cricket is played with SPORTIVE SPIRIT by all the teams.


3. While BATTING, AUSTRALIAN players will wait for the ON-FIELD UMPIRE decisions only (even if the catch goes to the FIFTH SLIP as the ball might not have touched the bat). Each AUSTRALIAN batsman has to be out FOUR TIMES (minimum) before he can return to the pavilion. In case of THE CRICKETER WITH INTEGRITY, this can be higher.


4. UMPIRES should consider a huge bonus if an AUSTRALIAN player scores a century. Any wrong decisions can be ignored as they will be paid huge bonus and will receive the backing of the AUSTRALIAN team and board.


5. All AUSTRALIAN players are eligible to keep commenting about all players on the field and the OPPONENT TEAM should never comment as they will be spoiling the spirit of the AUSTRALIAN team. Any comments made in any other language are to be considered as RACIALISM only.


6. MATCH REFEREE decisions will be taken purely on the AUSTRALIAN TEAM advices only. Player views from the other teams decisions will not be considered for hearing. MATCH REFEREES are to be given huge bonus if this rule is implemented.


7. NO VISITING TEAM should plan to win in AUSTRALIA. This is to ensure that the sportive spirit of CRICKET is maintained.


8. THE MOST IMPORTANT RULE: If any bowler gets RICKY PONTING - "THE UNDISPUTED CRICKETER WITH INTEGTIRY IN THE GAME OF CRICKET" more than twice in a series, he will be banned for the REST OF THE SERIES. This is to ensure that the best batsman/Captain will be played to break records and create history in the game of CRICKET.
   

These rules will clarify better to the all the teams VISITING AUSTRALIA.

Now it is upto you decide whether these rules are to be incorporated or not

Relations - Last or Lost?

"There are two kinds of people in the world, those who believe there are two kinds of people in the world and those who don't".

Robert Benchley must be really witty to quote such a statement. When it comes to relations, there are two kinds of people: those who really understand the relations and those who get involved in such relations just as a time pass activity. In the former, the relations last, while in the latter, they are lost.

I remember a statement told by our teacher. A person tells his/her spouse: "Your children and my children are playing with our children". Do you think it's just a joke? When we understand this sentence properly and think deeply upon this matter, it becomes obvious that it is perfectly applicable, especially in Western countries. But the relation need not only be marriage. It can as well be any other relation, such as friendship.

Coming back to the categories, I am sure, we all have seen both kinds of people. The people whom we met right in our childhood days, who still make us feel "Oh! Life is so beautiful" whenever think of them. We don't have to be with them forever to get such a feeling. It's just their presence in our minds that make us comfortable, even in the most critical situations.

Let us not forget the other category. When they were in our life, no doubt they made that part of the life lively. But now? Do they really remember those days or was it just a time pass activity? Did they really mean it? People whom we met, with whom we interacted for quite a long time, with whom we shared everything - if they don't want to share a single moment with us now, then what are we supposed to understand?

It is not the absence of a friend that annoys, but it is the silence. As someone has said, making 100 friends each lasting for an year is not a great thing. But it is really appreciable to make even one friend who lasts for 100 years... What do you say?

A formidable process: Indian Postal Service

Last week, as a part of our general training, we were being introduced to Software Engineering, wherein we came across the three most important things which render a project successful. They are: people, process and technology. The instructor gave an example of how a formidable process can make the entire organization superior. He took an example of the Indian Postal Service (officially known as India Post), which, in spite of a lot of difficulties, has been giving a promising service for over 150 years. I think that example is extremely thought provoking, and that is the reason I'm jotting down this article.

Let us quickly review the conditions under which the Indian Postal Service is working:

• Letters can be sent to any place in India, from Ladakh to Kanyakumari, from East to West, from metros to remote villages and delivery is ensured.
  
• With 20+ official languages and 24 languages being spoken by more than a million people, the diversity itself is a serious problem for India Post. But there is no rule that instructs people to write address in a particular language; you can write a letter to Uttar Pradesh writing address in Kannada, and still it reaches.
• Address in any part of India (excepting a few regions) is messed up, with "near" and "Opp." taking most of the address lines and sometimes only name and city is mentioned (Yes, it's hard to believe, but I am not exaggerating. It happened with my father, in which only the surname and city was mentioned in the address). As against this, for the postal services of other countries, door number/street is compulsory.
  
• Most people sending letters will not know the PIN (Postal Index Number) of the destination or they won't write it. Even worse, they sometimes write wrong PINs, but the people in the Post Offices are generous enough to correct the PINs and send it to the correct recipient. Contracting this, postal services in many other countries require PIN or ZIP codes specified, or the post will not be delivered.
  

Had we ever thought about all these? This is not a era when someone discusses why a postal card or an inland letter is not reaching properly. With telephones and mobile phones becoming a necessity and the Internet being the medium of fast communication, no one bothers about the snail mail. Also, when it comes to the public services, India is considered to be a close competitor for the last position. But, as I said, the example of the Indian Postal Service instantly changed my mindset and made me think and rethink.

Apart from all those constraints mentioned before, the number of posts undelivered is just about 5 per million. Very close to Six Sigma quality. And all this happens with no written rule. Such a quality service is possible only due to a formidable process and equally eminent people working in India Post who adhere to this process. There are a very few other such systems in the world, which always provide their 100%, yet remain unnoticed... Shouldn't we be proud of such systems?

Shortcut to Success?!

Well, it has been quite a while since I posted an article in this blog. That's due to the change in my dwelling place as well as my entry into the corporate world. Now I'm residing in the beautiful garden city, Bengaluru (Bangalore). I'm not going to write more about that now, but let me discuss an issue in which the current generation is getting attracted towards: finding shortcuts to success.

What is the most sought thing today? Probably, for most of us, it's money and nothing else. A more important issue regarding this matter is that everyone wants money, but without or minimal effort. But is it achievable?

There have been a lot of organizations which offer a huge money for a small investment, and there are a lot more people who go for them. With the advancement of the Internet and the means of online payments, it is growing even more rapidly nowadays. From offline firms like Amway to the online communities like agloco, from the antiquated firms like AllAdvantage to the emerging ones like eBiz and GISH, each of these firms has its own claims as to how the customer is able to earn a lumpsome amount. They promise to make you a millionaire in a year or two, but none of them has succeeded in this regard till now. Has anyone seen a person who is competing for a place in top 100 in the Forbes magazine just by participating in such organizations and making people members?

I'm not here to accuse these firms as frauds or to compell people not to join them. Each one has the right to do what he/she wants to do. Then why am I writing this article? I just want to share my yesterday's experience here.

My friend called me up requesting me to come to ITPL yesterday evening. He didn't tell any reason, but still I made sure that I went there. It was only after I met him that I came to know that he had called me to give a presentation about GISH, and now, I know that it has turned out to be a very good reason for me to write this article.

It was all about joining this organization by investing some amount initially and then urging others to be a part of it too. For every pair of members that you make, they give you 1000 bucks. And if you are able to have a certain fixed number of customers downline in a prescribed time period, you are eligible for some extra privileges by GISH. But that's not what matters here. An interesting figure he told was that even if you do only one pair of members in a month and consider the same rate of logins by those members and their downlines also, you'll end up with 2¹²=4096 members at the last level in one year. So it's not a big deal to have a large number of people down the line. Seems interesting right? Just think, can you continue with the same growth rate for the next couple of years?? You'll have to have 2³⁰ pairs, which means 68,719,476,736 people. Current population of the world is just 10% of that. Where on the Earth do we find those many homosapiens then? Do we have count and include ancestors too and make them members?? There is no shortcut to success. Hard work can only fetch you what you want.

I forgot to mention, the presentation started with the expansion of GISH: Goals, Income, Savings and Happiness. According to the presentor, achieving Goals brings you Income, which when Saved, will give you Happiness. But does money alone ever bring happiness? Every insightful word or adage or Shloka tells that money is the cause of all the sorrows of man. As Adi Shankaracharya has described in Bhajagovindam:

अर्थमनर्थं भावय नित्यं
नास्ति ततः सुखलेशः सत्यम् |
पुत्रादपि धनभाजां भीतिः
सर्वत्रैषा विहिता रीतिः ||

arthamanartham bhaavaya nityam
naasti tataH sukhaleshaH satyam ||
putraadapi dhanabhaajaam bheetiH
sarvatraiShaa vihitaa reetiH ||

Meaning:

Wealth is problem - think deeply on this
There is no true happiness from that
A rich man is afraid even of his own sons
This is true everywhere and forever

Now tell me, do you still think that you can become rich overnight? And even if you do, does that bring you happiness? It is up to you to think and decide what you want to go. Whichever path you take, I wish you all the best!

What do you think of yourselves, MindTree Minds?

They were humble, elegant and more social than they are now. They had never shown this frog-in-the-well attitude until that fateful (?) day they got recruited to an Indian multinational company called MindTree. I'm talking about my own classmates and friends who got entitled MindTree Minds when they got selected.

I have been observing this attitude not only in my classmates, but also in friends in other colleges and juniors too. There are a few exceptions, nevertheless. But I stress, only a few are still the same as they were before. What makes me post it here? Because the so called MindTree Minds:

• act as if MindTree is the only IT company in the world.
• don't generally combine with people other than MindTree recruitees as they used to be.
• show off that they are recruited to MindTree.
• talk about the company all the time.
• think that they are superior to others, while the truth is that some of them got selected by sheer luck.

I don't know what they think of themselves. Are their minds rotten to the core to be unable to understand the simple fact that they may not be in Mindtree forever? The sooner these vain mindtree minds understand the reality and come out of this dangerous egocentric syndrome, the better. As MindTree tag-line itself says, a tree is known by the fruit it bears. Mind it and get a life, folks!

Your honest opinions are welcome.

Free SMS for Karnataka Spice Customers!!

With all the Cell phone operators increasing the charges for SMS, it has been a difficult time for the students and those who rely upon SMS for the communication most of the times. Spice, Airtel, Hutch all have increased their tariffs to 5 paise or above. But a week ago, my friend RJP sent me a message telling a trick to get free SMS. This works only for Spice customers in the Karnataka circle.

Change your message centre number in the message settings from default number to +919810051913 +919840011055 +919810051873.

A few notes about this trick.

• It works only for Karnataka Customers.
  
• All messages are completely free.
  
• This works only for Spice numbers which start from 9964.
• You can't recharge your mobile by sending SMS with this message centre. You have to revert to your old message centre, recharge and then put this number back on.
• The specified message centre is Broadway II Gateway number.
• Even interstate messages are also free.

Just enjoy the free messages as long as Spice finds this out and corrects this bug. I owe you a lot RJP :)