Spam in Your Inbox
Are you getting a lot of mail from folks wanting to sell you stuff like software,
cheap prescription drugs, dirty pictures or other things, some of which are
'unmentionable'? Some of these emails contain virus, worms, Trojans to steal your
identity!
For your sake, I hope you just delete this junk unopened!
But did you ever wonder how spammers get your email address in the first place?
Most of the time, you gave them the address! Now I know you didn't intend to give it to them, but more than likely you
did!
You could have given it to them by filling out a form on a website. You know,
those websites that make you register so you can login to see the content. A lot
of news sites do this. They promise they won't sell your email address, but way
down on their 'Privacy Policy' page a lot of them do say they will give it to
their 'Partners'. Nowhere does it say what their 'Partners' will do with your
email address! Spammers pay big bucks for email address lists!
You could have given it to them by signing up for 'freebies'. Everyone likes free
stuff! Free screensavers, free computer wall paper, etc. By now you should have
learned that there really isn't very much 'free' stuff. If you have to register
on the site to get the 'free' stuff, guess what will happen to your email
address! (This is sorta like the ploy used by people who signed up to win a free
car, trip, etc., only to find they had agreed to switch their long distance
carrier!)
You could have given it to them by sending a joke to someone. How would that do
it? Well, picture this! I send you a joke you think is really funny and you
forward it to two of your friends. You don't remove my email address first before
you forward and you don't use BCC for the forward, just the TO. Both of your
friends think the joke is funny and each of them forwards the joke to two more
friends and they don't remove your email address or my email address and they
don't use the BCC, just the TO. This scenario keeps going on and on indefinitely,
with some of the senders sending the joke to five, six or a lot more email
addresses. Sooner or later, a spammer gets this joke. The spammer uses a
'harvester' to get all of the email addresses and now everyone who sent the joke
on it's merry way starts to get all that unwanted junk in their inboxes.
Sometimes you may not have given it to them, but one of your friends or email
contacts may have given it away by being an 'irresponsible computer user'. They
are not using an updated virus scanner, a firewall and haven't kept their Windows
updated with all of the security patches, so unknown to them, their computer has
turned into an 'Internet Zombie'. This means that a virus or worm is using their
computer to send out spam, virus, worms and who knows what other kind of malware.
While their computer is under the control of the 'invader', all of the files
including emails and address books are being raided and used as well. Hopefully
you are a responsible computer user!
So, how can you prevent all of this from happening? Some of it is probably beyond
your control, like how your friends forward emails and you sure can't control
whether or not they are 'responsible computer users'. You can try to educate
them, but mostly they won't listen, believe me I know from experience. About a
year ago an employee of AOL was caught selling email addresses, so that is
something else beyond your control, dishonest ISP employees.
What is in your control is whether or not you use your main email address to fill
out forms on the web. There are hundreds of places to sign up for free email
addresses. There is Hotmail, Yahoo mail and Google's Gmail, just to name a few. I
have several 'throw-away' email addresses to use for this kind of use. I just log
into the 'throw-away email account occasionally and delete all the junk. I use
the throw-away along with a fictitious profile if I really, really want some of
that 'free' stuff. (I never want it any more; it's usually full of
spyware!)
If your main email address is already compromised, get a new email address! Most
ISPs allow you to have more than one email account. Use something for your email
address that has both letters and numbers to keep the spammers from using a
'dictionary attack' and finding your email address.
My ISP has a feature called AddressGuard™. This feature allows
me to create disposable email addresses to use however I see fit. Check
with your ISP to see if they offer something similar.
About.com has a list of services that provide disposable email
addresses.
Learn how to 'forward' a joke or other information by using BCC and deleting all
of the email addresses that are in the email. You can highlight and delete all of
the unwanted information, or you can just copy the part you want to send and
paste it all into a new, blank email.
I don't get much spam since I started using these tactics. I don't even
get much spam from the email address on my website as I use code so that
spam harvester can't read the address.
