I’m still getting loads of unwanted adverts, or “spam”, in my inbox. Like everyone else, I’ve wondered whether all these offers for get-rich-quick schemes or herbal viagra were serious.

Now someone has actually bothered replying to the messages to see what happens, and the results are pretty much what you’d expect.

A reporter for the online magazine Wired sent seventy-five emails asking for more information. Thirteen replied with people selling something real and legal, like cheap software.

Twelve were blatant ripoffs, like a report on ‘selling things on auction sites’ that was basically just printed copies of help pages from the site itself. And over half didn’t reply at all.

Wired thinks this is because the people who had sent out the mail in the first place were only interested in collecting working email addresses from people gullible enough to reply.

These addresses are then sold on to other spammers in a crazy circle where everyone takes everyone else’s money.

Replying's a mistake

The whole thing works because more and more people are getting online every day, so there are always new addresses to find.

Many new users haven’t realised that replying to spam email, even if you are asking to unsubscribe, is a guaranteed way to get even more junk mail.

Another report out this week makes it clear just how far these people will go.

The online law magazine Out-Law has been looking at spam and found that many of the messages are able to track you when you open them.

These messages have hidden codes in them, and when you open one it contacts a website run by the people who sent it, telling them your email address.

Just delete!

Once the spammers know that your email address is being used, you get added to a lot more mailing lists and can expect a lot more spam.

What’s really worrying is that you don’t even have to open the message.

If you use an email program like Microsoft Outlook or Outlook Express that shows you the message when you select it, that is enough to trigger the codes.

The people doing this don’t care that it’s illegal under the UK Data Protection Act. All they care about is getting more email addresses to sell to other people.

Most of them aren’t based in Britain anyway and the best advice is to select these junk mail messages and delete them without even looking at them.

Unless, of course, they are really interesting, like the offer to “look younger and lose weight” that has just arrived in my inbox.

Apparently it “actually reduces aging symptoms without dieting or exercise”. I can’t wait to try it out...

Are you mad about spam? Have your say!

It was Valentine’s Day last Friday - you probably noticed the pink hearts everywhere. - and to mark the occasion the Royal National Institute for the Blind launched a new game.

In the game, called ‘Blind Date’, you get to try out your dating skills by watching some short cartoons and choosing how you would act.

It’s a nice enough way to spend five minutes on the Web, but the interesting thing is that the game can be played by blind people too.

That's because it works with programmes that read whatever is on the screen out loud.

This sort of thing is a lot rarer than you might think.

Although the BBC tries hard to make its website usable by people who can’t see (Click the ‘text only’ link at the top left of this page) there are still millions of pages that blind people can’t use.

If the internet is going to be for everyone, surely anyone making a website should be thinking about the two million blind and partially sighted people in this country?

Is accessibility worth the cost?
Click here to have your say!