Lets Be Good Cyber-Citizens, Fight Spam!

Have you ever opened your email only to find it flooded with people trying to sell you cheap Viagra or offering fake stock tips? I'm sure this has happened to all of us, and on a regular basis. How long do you spend trying to weed out the good emails from the bad ones? Welcome to the World of Spam. Spammers are always finding new ways to get past spam filters and get into your Inbox. These 4 tips will help you reduce the amount of spam that you receive even without a spam filter.

Tip #1:
If you get a spam message in your Inbox, delete it! Do not open it, click on any links inside of it and definitely do not reply to it even if there is a link inside that says "Click Here to Unsubscribe From this List." By doing this, you are verifying that the email address that it was sent to is valid. Now that they know the email address is a real one, the spammers will start sending A LOT more spam and sell your email address to other spammers.

Tip #2:
Have more than one email account. Here is an example of how to do this and why it works. We will use two email addresses in this example: This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it and This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it . We will use the Yahoo! account as our personal email and the Hotmail account as our junk email.

This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it : Never give this email address to anyone except those you know and trust. Do not sign up for newsletters and do not make purchases using this email address. Never give this address to "receive verification" emails for downloading programs or for signing up for an online account. You can use this account to receive your online Bank Statements, Credit Card bills and payments and other information you need to receive. When you log into this email account, you will notice that the only emails in here are the ones you want to receive.

This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it : Use this email address for everything else. Sign up for those newsletters you want to receive. When making a purchase online, you will want a copy of your receipt. Give the Hotmail account as the address to receive this receipt. Some websites ask for an email address so they can send you a verification email before they let you download their software, sign up for an online community and other things you may want to do. This email account will be FULL of junk mail so you will want to clean it out regularly. You can also forward your receipts for purchases and other emails you need to your Yahoo! account so you have a copy of them in your junk-free account.

Of course, it is inevitable that the Yahoo! account will eventually receive a junk email or two, but this is much better than receiving hundreds. Just make sure you mark these as "Spam" so that Yahoo! will remember to just throw emails like these into the Junk folder automatically.

Tip #3:
Do not send "e-Cards" to friends, family or even yourself. When you send an e-Card to someone, it puts the email address that you sent it to in a large database with all the other email address that have been entered by other people. These large databases of email addresses are then sold to spammers for a good chunk of change and when that happens, just expect your email address to make the rounds to all major spammers across the world. Once you get entered into one database, you have essentially been entered into them all. Ask the people that have your email address to not send e-Cards to you and to not forward "Chain Emails" to you either (unless they are sending them to your junk account ). Chain emails are a great way to collect email addresses.

Tip #4:
Never make a purchase from an unsolicited email. The first reason why you shouldn't, and probably the most obvious, is that you have no idea if the company, sender or products are legitimate. They may just take your credit card information and use it themselves or sell it on the black market. Secondly, you will be putting yourself into one of those email lists that get sold to others, which will be sold again and again and again making your spam problem worse and worse. If we can all be responsible Cyber-Citizens and follow these tips, it will make our Cyber-World a whole lot better and a whole lot cleaner.

courtesy - Invisus Solutions Newsletter