Get in Trouble with Spam? Look Here for Answers.

Unsolicited junk e-mail, or spam, is an unwelcome and often offensive byproduct of the Internet's success. Although there's no guarantee you can avoid all spam , there are ways to avoid looking at most of it. 1.Create yourself two email accounts. The first email account should have your first name and your last name in it; this email address is for serious, personal communications and personal use between friends and family. Create a new email account with a service like Hotmail or Yahoo! Mail. This second email account has no restrictions for a username; it is for those pesky registration pages and websites that require you enter an email in order to access or contribute to them.  It can also used for online purchases . 2. Don't publish your professional email address online, ever. And never under any circumstances submit your professional email address to a website in order to gain access or contribute to that site, whether they tell you they’ll keep it confidential or not. 3. Use an email client, like Mozilla's Thunderbird , or Apple's Mail , which comes with intelligent built in spam filtering . 4. Define a rule for incoming mail. It may say, "If my name appears in the To: or cc: field, then move this message to the Inbox." The procedure for defining rules varies among e-mail programs, so you should consult your program's Help feature to learn exactly how this works. 5.Define individual rules to catch e-mail that isn't addressed to you personally but that you nevertheless want to receive, such as messages from lists you've subscribed to. Have these rules redirect the relevant messages to the Inbox or to special folders that you have created for mail from those sources--for instance: "If the Sender field includes 'MyList,' then send this message to the MyList folder." 6.Define a final rule that sends all other e-mail that hasn't already been redirected by one of your other rules to the Suspected Spam box. For instance, a rule that says, "If the Sender field isn't 'XYXYXYXYY,' then move this message to the Suspected Spam folder" would work as a catchall. 7.Don't make your email address public. If you run a website, use an online form, instead of your email address. If you like to post messages on forums, make sure people don't have access to your email address. Furthermore, if you post messages to Newsgroups (Usenet), don't use your real email address. 8.Don't write your email address on paper forms. When your bank or companies request your email address, don't write it down. Most companies will not only send you spam from their own company, they will also sell your address to interested third parties. 9.Unless the company that you're receiving spam from is well known and reputable, don't click on the unsubscribe links, or follow the unsubscribe instructions provided at the bottom of many spam messages. More often than not, spammers use this to verify that you're email address is valid, instead of unsubscribing you. 10. Don't respond to any emails from strangers with your professional email address unless you’re absolutely certain this person is contacting you for the right reasons. Spammers will often send emails out to collect personal information from you under the guise of a professional inquiry. Make sure you don’t bite for spammers.

Was this helpful? 0 0 Comments

You're reading Get in Trouble with Spam? Look Here for Answers..