Check out our top 6 tips to manage spam
These six basic rules to keep your account safe and secure – and not part of a spam botnet.
1) Never respond to spam. Ever.
Oh sure, they say they’ll take your name off the list, but they’re lying. What they really want to do is confirm that they’ve got a live address. Also, if you respond, they’ll sell your address to every other spammer on the planet meaning you’ll soon be flooded with even more spam. The guy who sent you an email about his late father’s fortunes probably isn’t a prince of anything except a spam empire.
2) Do not publicly post your email address
It seems like a good idea at the time, but posting your email address on your personal home page is just an invitation to spammers. Spammers and the people who sell spamming as a business have software that “harvests” or “scrapes” email addresses from the Net. This software crawls through the Internet seeking text strings that are -something-@-something-.-something-. When it finds one, it catalogs it on a database of other email addresses to be used to send spam.
3) Use a secondary email address for newsgroups and social networks
Newsgroups are the great email address gathering ground for spammers. If you post to a group, you’re going to get spam — it is just a matter of time. So how are you supposed to participate? Use a different email address than the one you use for talking to friends and relatives. In other words, have a public address and a private address. You’ll just have to deal with the spam in your public account.
4) Don’t give up personal information, including your email address, without knowing where or how it will be used
If a website is asking for your email address, they want to use it for something. Be sure you know what. Read the terms of use and privacy statements of any site before telling them your address. Ask yourself some simple questions. Are they going to share or sell my address? Do I want emails from this website? Do I trust them? Is it worth the risk? If you can’t answer these questions satisfactorily, if you can’t find their privacy statement, don’t tell them your address.
5) Use a spam filter
While there is no such thing as a perfect filter, anti-spam software can help keep spam at manageable level. Some of it is cumbersome, some works better than others, some even requires that you let your email messages go through another system for storage and cleaning.
6) Never buy anything advertised via spam.
The reason that people spam is because they can make money. They make money, like all advertisers, by convincing people to buy a product. If no one buys the things advertised in spam, companies will quit paying spammers to advertise their products. You don’t really need those berries and that site they are advertising…probably isn’t a real pharmacy. Use your common sense.