You don't have to have visited
"dubious" sites in order to get spam or junk email. But if
you've ever supplied your email address to a newsgroup, a
mailing list or a directory, you may well become a target for
spammers. If your email address appears on your own web site,
you will almost certainly become a target.
This is because spammers use automated systems to trawl round
the Internet, harvesting all the email addresses they can find
where they then add these email addresses to their mailing
lists. They don't care if some of the email addresses are
invalid since their spam will get through to plenty of people
anyway. The mailing lists get sold and re-sold meaning you get
more and more spam. If you try to "unsubscribe" your request
will usually be, at best, ignored. At worst, you have told the
spammers that your address is valid, and you'll get even more
spam.
Our top tips to avoid spam
1. Don't give out your
personal email address
This is stating the obvious but it's the first big mistake
people make. DO NOT use your personal email address for sign up
forms, competitions, surveys or any other nonsense that may
result in you being spammed. It's much easier to prevent spam,
by never giving out your personal email address, than it is to
cure the problem once you're on 100's of junk email lists.
2. Use a free email account
Set yourself up with a Hotmail, Yahoo or any other free
email account and use it as a spam holder account i.e. use it on
all those pop-ups or sign up forms that you *suspect* may try to
spam you. You can then periodically check your free email
account for both legitimate and spam email and delete the
rubbish you don't want. This single step can save you countless
spam related headaches.
3. ISP Service
Check with your ISP (Internet Service Provider) for a lot of
companies now provide a scan and remove service as part of their
standard package.
4. Install a spam filter
Unfortunately even when you follow all the correct steps you can
still wind up getting junk email. There's only one solution at
that point - install a spam filter on your PC. If you use
Microsoft Outlook 2003 this comes with a built in spam filter.
There are a number of so called free programs available but take
advice before using these as they may affect your system and
service.
5. Newsgroups and forums
Spammers love newsgroups and forums. They especially love
the way people post their personal email addresses there. It
doesn't matter if it's a paid, private or free forum spammers
have their harvester programs hunting for email addresses every
minute of every day. If you have to post your email address then
try and use an email address that can be removed at a later
date.
Spammers can harvest 35,000 email addresses per hour from
newsgroups and forums - don't let your email address become one
of those |
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