Spam for most of us it`s something irritating. It`s one of the email diseases and is being produced by other people.
If you hate spam, well I have some bad news for you. It will keep bugging you for years to come. I am an old Internet user and I have a large experience with spam. Spam is not something that you can control but you can do your best to prevent spam. If you think that you will never going to receive a spam message in your email than you`re wrong. Try to create an email address and keep it for you, do not send or receive a message and there is a big chance for you to receive spam in one day. Why ? Because there are so many methods that will allow a spammer to get your email address and I will show you most of them. I am going to show you the best methods for minimizing spam and I will explain why doing this and that is wrong.
1. DO NOT CREATE AN EMAIL ADDRESS THAT IS EASY TO BE GUESSED
If you will create an intuitive email address you will receive spam even if you will never give out your email address. An intuitive email address could be your name used as the username of your email.
For example: johndoe@domain.com IS A BAD EXAMPLE
You need to create an email address that cannot be guessed using a program
For example: johndoe_june1970 IS A GOOD EXAMPLE
My name is Chris Parker, I just discovered the Internet and I need to create an email address so that I can communicate with my friends. In order to buy things on the Internet, in most cases I`ve heard that an email box is being required. So here I am, I have created my first email address:
THIS IS WRONG: Some spammers, at least in the past, created programs that would allow them to create databases with most used names and surnames and this is very simple. We only need a couple of names and surnames.
SURNAMES:
chris
amanda
NAMES:
brown
smith
Now the program will mix the combinations of names and surnames, keep in mind that they are using thousands or even millions of names and surnames.
Their program created the following usernames :
chrisbrown
chrissmith
brownchris
smithchris
They are even smarter than this by adding the following method by adding ``.`` and ``_``
chrisbrown
chrissmith
brownchris
smithchris
chris.brown
chris.smith
brown.chris
smith.chris
chris_brown
chris_smith
brown_chris
smith_chris
The result is as you can see, devastating, I just created 12 users from nothing. Ad the @ sign and add a popular domain name and you will see that there are a lot of people that are using this form of id.
This method is completely wrong and Chris was advised by a good friend to change his email address and this is what he did. He created the following email address:
It`s not so cool but at least it will defeat that method of guessing people email addresses.
2. DO NOT POST YOUR EMAIL ADDRESS ON FORUMS, BLOGS OR ANY OTHER WEBPAGES EVEN IF YOU WILL REPLACE @ WITH AT
If you will make a comment somewhere on a website and you will post your email address there you will receive spam as spammers constantly crawls the web in order to harvest email addresses. They will find your email address and they will use it. Even if you will replace the ``@`` with ``AT`` you`re still a target for spam.
If you`re going to say email me here: JOHNDOE AT HOWTOANSWER.COM is still a bad ideea because a lot of spammers are targetting those expressions and save them in a database. Supposing that they saved 10.000 email addresses and all of them are the same such as JOHNDOE AT HOWTOANSWER.COM. They will use CTRL+H combination and they will simply replace the word AT with @ and here they are, they have 10.000 fresh email addresses from people that really think that using the word AT instead of @ it will stop spam.
3. DO NOT REPLY TO HOAX MESSAGES
Such messages are a little different because they rely on people trust. The spammer will invent a story such as the one with Microsoft, actually I received one yesterday and it sounds like this: ``Bill Gates decided to share his fortune to people that are using Microsoft Windows``. He decided to share a part of his fortune to millions of people. If you will send this message to all of your friends you could receive $ 1000 from Microsoft. In this way Microsoft will select one user from your group and if one user will be selected than the entire group of friends will be paid. Let`s increase our chances and let`s send this message to our friends, we have nothing to loose``.
I really received a message like this and guess what, I am going to receive spam just because one of my friends was stupid enough to trust this message. So thank you dear friend for exposing my email address. There are thousands of new stories but never trust them, they are all created for innocent users, such as my friend.
This is a simple method and because it`s so simple it`s also a dangerous one. The spammer will use a couple of email addresses. He will invent a story that can be trusted by someone. Supposing he will send the same email to 100 users, he only needs one user in order to spread everything. 1 user will have 10,50,100 emails in his contact list and he will send this email to all those contacts. Again, another innocent user will send this message to others and so on...
The spammer will be able to obtain all these emails without using a virus or dealing with anti-spam filters. Simple and clean, it will use innocent people to do his work. I guess the only way to avoid this is to make sure that most of your friends are smart enough to delete such messages.
4. DO NOT OPEN SPAM MESSAGES IF THE SENDER LOOKS SUSPICIOUS
Email was invented to allow us to communicate easier and to share useful informations. If someone that you don`t know sends you a message with a subject that looks suspicious than it probably is. Do not open such messages as probably it`s a message that once read it will inform the spammer that this address is valid and it will send you spam. If that message is from someone you know than it`s probably not spam. Try to think that a friend or someone you know will never send you a message that looks strange. If you will receive a message from someone you know but that message looks strange than maybe his computer got infected and it`s up to you to inform him.
This method of spam is mostly used if the spammer was using the first method ( read the first method ) and he needs to know that this email address is being used by you. It could be a dead address as some email providers will say that all emails are good even if they don`t even exists. So, the spammer needs to receive a confirmation from you, the victim. The easiest way is to send a message that contains an html code and if he will running a script he will receive the confirmation as fast as you will simply open the message. It`s a tricky method that will convince a lot of people.
5. DO NOT RESPOND TO SPAM
Sounds strange but there are lot of people that will e-mail back to the spammer trying to convince him that he doesn`t want to receive spam. That`s a bad ideea as you will confirm that you`re real and also that you`re an active person that checks his email on a daily basis and this will result in more spam.
When they send their spam messages, in most cases, spammers are using other people addresses in order to trick your anti-spam filter. So if you will receive a message from johndoe@domain.com it`s actually a message being sent in the name of this user but it`s not being sent from the email of this user. I said in most cases. Spammers that are using viruses and infect millions of computers are capable of such actions but the other ones are using this technique described as ``mail forgery``. A spammer will use a program that will send a message using a list of email addresses, real email addresses. This program will trick the mail servers and they will send the message to you.
6. DO NOT RELY ON ANTI-SPAM FILTERS TRYING THAT THIS WILL SOLVE THE PROBLEM
If you think that the anti-spam filter will keep you safe than you`re wrong. A good anti-spam filter is helpful but it is not perfect. Those filters are good for keeping some spam messages away but sometimes they will send a legitimate message to JUNK/SPAM. That`s why you need to check those folders from time to time just to make sure that you don`t miss a message that is not spam.
As you can imagine, the anti-spam filters are now created to learn the different spam schemes and tricks but there are not perfect. Those are programs that will take an action if a rule is being broken or looks suspicious. As you can imagine, the spammers are trying to defeat those spam filters by testing and testing all the time. This is their job and some of them are professionals and believe it or not, they have some skills. Bad skills bad they are not some people plays with this, they are making money and defeating the anti-spam filters means more money for them.
7. DO NOT BUY SOMETHING OFFERED IN SPAM
You give them, you keep them on the business. If you will buy something offered in a spam message you are encouraging their business and they will send you more spam.
This is not all, think about this: who will guarantee you that if you will buy something you won`t have any troubles with the law ? Maybe they are selling something that was stolen. A couple of years ago I saw a lot of email messages about Viagra. I mean, it could be cheaper when compared with a drugstore but it could cost you your health if those pills were made on a ship or God knows on what country.
8. DO NOT SEND PERSONAL INFORMATIONS VIA EMAIL
You should not send your personal information over email. I mean at name and address, credit card details, bank account details and anything like that. It is not safe and I never heard of a bank doing such a thing but I`ve heard of people that given their credit cards and their bank accounts when they clicked on a link claiming to be from their bank or from another financial institution.
This is not the purpose of this article but phishing is also a form of spam, the only difference is that at classic spam the author will try to sell you something or to advertise for something. Here, the author of phishing has only one purpose: to obtain personal information that would allow him to steal money from inocent people. Phishing is extremely dangerous and it`s only one golden rule here. Remember that your bank or any other financial company such as PayPal ( or other websites such as eBay or others ) or others will NEVER request for personal information via email.
9. DO NOT GIVE YOUR EMAIL ADDRESS TO A WEBSITE BY USING A ``SUBSCRIBE ME`` FEATURE
Do not give your email address to a website that you don`t know. Actually I would recommend you to avoid using the old method of ``SUBSCRIBE ME`` and I will tell you why: if the owner of a ``cool`` website claims that he will never rent, sell or give your e-mail address but in his ``Terms of Agreement`` specifies that if he is going to sold his website he will also sell all his email addresses than your email address could be sold to someone else if this happens. And you will receive a legal spam if we could say so.
Wait! It`s more, that`s the good part but there are a lot of well-known websites, I mean really big ones that were ``hacked`` and their databases ended in the hands of spammers. I mean it happened not once, not twice but there are thousands of websites. Believe it or not, a lot of websites that were ``hacked`` didn`t made that public and this is something that you can`t control. That`s why I would not use a ``subscribe me`` feature.
AS A CONCLUSION: Spam is not something that can be controled overnight, there is no such thing as the best method, maybe being informed is a plus but it`s not bulletproof. It will take years until spam will be defeated and I am sure that this will never happen as long as people will still use the email like now. You cannot stop spam but you can reduce spam and you can receive so less spam that it won`t be so irritating. Keep yourself informed and make sure to separate things. I would recommend you to create two email addresses, one that will be used only for buying on the Internet and other important stuffs and the other one for things that you wouldn`t want to affect your primary email address.