7 Surefire Ways To Combat Spam - And Win

Wednesday, October 7, 2009
If you are like most of us your mailbox is full of spam emails. These emails promise you a better sex life, a work from home opportunity, wealth from your departed Nigerian relatives, and cheap prescriptions without a doctor visit, just to name a few. Some of them even look legitimate so you read them which unknowingly just set you up to receive more spam. This is why it is important to learn how to avoid spam.

Besides being annoying, spam email can be dangerous so you should learn how to avoid spam in the first place. Email is used for phishing scams, with authentic looking emails from businesses that you are acquainted with. These emails usually ask you to sign into your account from their fake links to update important information. If you fall for these email scams, these crooked websites then steal your password and account information which can be used to obtain your financial or other personal information.

The reason you should learn how to avoid spam is that the people most likely to fall for these email scams are the elderly and those who are just beginning to use the internet. This is a dangerous situation that is only likely to get worse as more people go online to do shopping, banking, and bill paying. There are few things you can do to reduce the amount of spam that enters your mailbox and to manage those messages that do get through.

These tips may help if you want to learn how to avoid spam emails:

1. Get a good spam filter - Most email providers filter spam for you but you must check your privacy settings to make sure they are set up to do this. If given the option to do so, move the spam to a spam folder or mark it as spam so that your email provider's settings will learn your preferences.

2. Choose an email that spammers are not likely to guess exists - Spammers are less likely to harvest a complicated email address such as drgm894@email dot com than they are one that uses common names.

3. Don't give your email address to spammy looking websites or dubious companies - This is just asking for trouble. Never use your primary or business email address to sign up for information, posting to the Web, newsgroups, on Web contact pages, or on a resume that you post to the Web.

4. Do not click on emails that you suspect are spam - if a preview feature is available; enable it so that you can read the first few lines of an email message without clicking on it.

5. Do not reply to a spam email - This just confirms to the sender of the spam that you received their message. Do not click on links to unsubscribe as this also just confirms your existence.

6. Disguise your email address on your website - Do not post your email address in plain text on your website. This makes it easy for email harvesters to grab your address as they are crawling the web. An easy thing to do is make the @ sign into an image which may throw off automatic harvesting.

7. Don't use your email address as a screen name in a chat room - This is another tactic that email harvesters rely on to gather information about you.

Learning how to avoid spam emails should reduce the amount of unwanted email that you receive. You will still need to be vigilant to avoid the efforts of spammers who are very persistent in their efforts. Frank Adams

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