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November 17, 2006

How To Forget About Spam Once And For All

You will laugh next time you see an unknown email message in your Inbox. This knowledge will help you understand more what spammers and phishers look like.

First suggestion to decrease spam

The best way to decrease or totally eliminate spam from your Inbox is to use a Gmail account. I tested a lot of accounts, such as yahoo mail, hotmail, adpost, outlook express and mailup.

I noticed that Gmail is very good to filter spam, and even though I receive spam all of it ends automatically in the Spam Folder. I do not use any anti spam software. Although I receive even more than hundred emails a day the spam software is useless if you have a Gmail account. You can get it for free from the google website.

If you are receiving spam from the same people over and over again you can report them. If you use Gmail, you can contact the Google Team. You can also create a filter that will automatically delete all messages sent from a specific email address.

Common reasons you receive spam

1. You receive spam because people see your email address. That does not mean you have to keep it Top Secret. It means you must use your email carefully. If possible don't write it down in message boards, forums, groups or classified ads.

Treat your email address as if it is the key of an important door. Do not share it with everyone, or give it freely away to other people whom you do not yet know. Spammers find these email addresses online, anywhere. Then they start sending you messages or even sell your email to other spammers. When you really need to type your email somewhere online use this format:

youremail AT gmail.com or
youremail @ gmail.com or
youremail AT gmail DOT com

Spammers use software that search the internet for email address. Putting yours in that format will ensure software do not find your email but people who need to know it can still figure it out.

I have more than one Gmail account and you can too. I have one account that I use to communicate with my friends and use it to subscribe for free newsletters I find interesting. Another Gmail account is used just to receive email from my blog visitors usually questions, comments or suggestions.

2. Subscriptions to newsletters, ezines or any other subscription may be dangerous. Do not submit your Name and Email to all the subscription boxes you find online.

Some are so interesting that attract a lot of people, maybe cause they are giving away something for free. There are hundreds and thousands of newsletters, and usually they all give some freebie to attract new subscribers.

Use caution, and only subscribe to newsletters and ezines that you are really interested in, not just to receive the freebie. If you just need the freebie a good idea is to create a new Gmail account and name it myfreebies. Then use that account just for getting freebies.

If the site is looking badly designed, or even some other things that are repelling you, then don't subscribe. The badly designed sites do not have good newsletters neither and they might sell your email or send you spam.

Most dangerous type of spam

Phishing is the most dangerous type of scam. Phishers attempt to fraudulently acquire sensitive information, such as passwords and credit card details. These people are simple called Phishers not Spammers.

Phishers send messages trying to make you believe they are huge companies like paypal, ebay, stormpay, HSBC and many others.

Further more these email may contain viruses. You should just delete them. Never click the links inside these emails.

Those sites are fake, and just by clicking on a single fake link from your email message can harm your PC with viruses.

Ebay, paypal or any other worldwide known company will always email you saying:
Dear your full name or Dear name

Phishers most often do not even say Dear or Hello, or say just Hello Friend. They don't know your real name most often.

Links inside emails can be verified to see if they are fake or real. If you open a message and you think it is phishing place your mouse button without clicking over the URL. It's important not to click. Then simple look at the bottom of your browser (that place is called the Status Bar)

Are the links the same? Probably not, cause they are fake. Delete message.

An example:

Link inside email: www.harmony-shoes-free.com
Link you see at the bottom of your browser (the status bar): www.secure123-harmony-shoes-free.com

As you can see they are completely different so it means the link is FAKE.


You should treat spam as if they are really harmful cause they indeed are. Take care of your email address, cause it is the key to your privacy. The Internet can be very dangerous if you allow it to be. This advice helps makes your online activity safer. Everyone has common sense, and it is important to make use of it when you are on the Internet. If it looks to good to be true, than it is.

Recommended Articles:

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7 Comments on this post. Post your comment :)


7 Comments:

Hi!
Information Security Carnival is up .

And your article was selected!

Comment, link to us! Spread the word!

By Anonymous Systemcall, at 3:21 AM  

Thanks for adding my article. I found other articles useful on your site like:

Picking Strong Passwords that you can Remember from Mark Sanborn.

I am sure people who visit the Information Security Carnival will find something useful.

Thanks

By Blogger Karl Sultana, at 4:04 AM  

Is there a way to stop spam from even coming into your spam folder in the first place, besides putting filters up? - Even then it doesnt always work, the same word will still keep coming through. I have young children that use it and they are getting like 60 nasty messages in a week. I don't know what we signed up for that caused it to do that but it's not cool. Any advice?

By Anonymous Anonymous, at 11:37 AM  

Hi,

Here is a list of free spam blocker software :
http://www.snapfiles.com/Freeware/comm/fwspam.html

(with user ratings)

And another one I recommend is https://www.vqme.com/pk/index with 15 day free trial. When someone sends you an email they have to verify their email... just once... Spammers usually blast out hundreds and thousands of emails.. and they do not verify each single one...

That means you only get emails from people that verify they are genuine... the ones not verified are not delivered neither to inbox or spam, more info on their site.

Test it out for 15 days...

Karl

By Blogger Karl Sultana, at 1:21 AM  

Sorry, link to spam blockers is not visible well. Here is the link once again:
http://www.snapfiles.com/Freeware/comm/fwspam.html

By Blogger Karl Sultana, at 1:23 AM  

why don't just use temporary mail like www.litedrop.com When you need to register something don't give your real email, simple as that

By Anonymous passerby, at 8:06 AM  

Using a disposable email address has advantages but also a ton of other disadvantages.

Depends on your needs.

If you need to save emails, store them, or if you receive emails regularly you cannot make use of disposable email addresses. So obviously they are not NO solution to spam.

Karl Sultana

By Blogger Karl Sultana, at 12:27 AM  

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