AM I GETTING SPAM FROM NCANE.COM?

The short answer: No. We never send unsolicited emails. It's that simple.

There have been almost 36 000 (thirty-six thousand) short URLs created on ncane.com since its inception in February 2006. Of these, approximately 6 000 (six thousand) have been deleted. That's right: we get spam too, in our database.

It takes a lot of effort to make sure the URLs that we redirect to are reasonably safe. Although we are not responsible for the links that are created on the site, we still want to take reasonable care that you're not clicking on a spam URL. We just don't have time to send unsolicited emails.

Plus, South Africa is one of the most expensive countries for buying bandwidth. We pay around $100 per month for 5GB of traffic at 384 Kbps down, 128 Kbps up.

One of our features, namely emailing a link to a friend, has been used fewer than 1000 times. Each of those emails is tracked in our database at the time it was created, and includes the source IP address of the person who created it. These messages are clearly labelled as originating from ncane.com, and include instructions on how to report spam, as well as the date and time, to facilitate easy tracking.

Since February 2006, no one has reported spam originating from our server. Not one.

HOW TO TELL THAT IT REALLY CAME FROM NCANE.COM

There's an easy way to tell whether the email you received actually came from us. Here is a short checklist:

• In the mail header the message ID will look something like this:

  Message-Id: <xxxxxxx-xxxxxx-xx@mitford.site5.com>



• The subject line is prefixed with [ncane.com]. We're proud of our service and we want you to know about it.



• The email body contains at least five references to ncane.com. We're proud of our service and we want you to know about it.



• We don't want your money. Most spam messages are trying to sell you something, or trying to con you into putting your personal details into an unsavoury website. We're providing a free URL redirection service, and we want everyone to use it. If you're going to click on any URL, it's http://ncane.com.

IF IT'S SPAM, IT DIDN'T COME FROM US

So there you have it. We do not send spam. If you are unsure, send the suspected email to your own ISP, and ask them yourself. Be sure to include the full message headers. In Microsoft Outlook, you can find these by clicking on "View" > "Options" in the email itself, or by right-clicking on the message in your Inbox, and clicking "Options".

You can also check out Randy Cassingham's free Spam Primer, to find out more about this scourge on the Internet and how to deal with it. He has some really useful tips.

The bottom line is that you are doing yourself a disservice by getting upset with us, and you're making us upset if you accuse us of spamming you. We do not send spam.