PC Security - Stopping Spam
Part 1: Strategies
Spam is a big problem for many. It takes time, resources,
and in some cases money to battle. Unfortunately, it is always a battle that
never ends. As you block one group of spammers, other spam is making its
way to your email box, a whole new group of spammers are coming online, or
the old spammers are using new spam email addresses to send spam from. To
many, it seems like a no-win situation that just goes on and on. There are
options that make the battle easier to fight, however.
Fortunately, addresses that spammers use are gathered by programs - they
are not individually, manually harvested. Because a program is used, a program
can fight it. Before using such spam fighting programs, however, one must
first understand how spammers operate. When you know how they do it, it is
easier to fight.
The most common tool used by spammers are spambots. This software scans websites
looking for email addresses. When it finds one, it adds the email address
to the list. The list grows very, very large, and is eventually used to send
spam by the person running the spambot, or sold to those spammers who do
not have spambots.
You have a couple of ways to fight spambots. First, you can opt to not use
your real email address on websites, such as webpages or forums, or you could
use a throw away email address to collect spam, such as a Yahoo email account,
if the site requires an email address, but the email won't require interaction
from you. The other option is to use your real email address, but instead
of typing it as you@yourdomain.com, you could type it as you at your domain
dot com. A spambot would not recognize this as an email address, because
it only appears as text.
This doesn't mean that your email won't still be harvested, but it won't
be harvested nearly as much. Furthermore, it generally requires the spammer
collecting the email addresses to 'scrub' it so that it will work in their
spamming software (the email type client that they use to send out the spam).
The disadvantage of this is that humans who really do need your address,
for legitimate purposes, such as customers, will have to reformat the address
before they can send you email. Some may not be Internet/Computer savvy enough
to realize that you are writing your email address in such a way as to cut
down on spam either.
You should be using spam filters. Most email services and clients now include
built-in spam filters. These should always be turned on. However, note that
some will actually view some mail as spam, even if it is not. Spam filters
operate by looking for certain words. If a personal email arrives and contains
words that are commonly associated with spam, such as 'making money,' it
will most likely hit the spam folder. Never delete the messages in your spam
folder without first glancing through to make sure that there is not any
personal email in there.
These two methods for fighting spam are just the start. Again, the battle
rages on, but by implementing these two strategies, you will find that you
start receiving less spam than you have been.
 PC Security: Index
PC Security:
Internet Browsers
PC Security:
Spam
PC Security:
Stopping Spam Part 1
PC Security:
Stopping Spam Part 2
PC Security: Spam
Scams
PC Security:
Email Security and Spam
PC Security:
Email Security
PC Security:
Computer Viruses
PC Security:
Protecting Computers From Viruses
PC Security:
Worm Viruses
PC Security:
Trojan Horse Viruses
PC Security:
Rootkits
PC Security:
Removing a Virus
PC Security:
Virus Hoaxes
PC Security:
Server Viruses
PC Security:
Home Network
PC Security:
Cell Phone Viruses
PC Security:
Spyware
PC Security:
Firewalls Part 1
PC Security:
Firewalls Part 2
PC
Security: Parental Control Software
PC Security:
Malware - Spyware and Adware
PC Security:
Data Backups
PC Security:
Pop Up Windows
PC
Security: Safe Public Computer
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