Spam: Don’t let it take over your inbox

For those of you who do not know what I mean when I use the word spam; spam is unsolicited email. Spam has many faces as well. It can be anything from “Lowering your mortgage rates” to sexual stimulants and enhancement drugs. Spam has become a major problem to many computer users. If it hasn’t been a problem to you personally, I am sure you know someone who it has. My mom for instance, has received over 200 spam messages over the course of one weekend. It got so bad that it took her computer anywhere between 15-20 minutes to download her email messages. That’s when I decided to sit her down and teach her a few things about spam.

So the next question to address is, how do spammers get your email address? That’s easy; they get it directly or indirectly from you. Have you ever browsed a website and signed up for a promotional sweepstakes and it asked for an email address. Or have you ever signed up for a “Free” Newsletter. In most cases, those “free” services aren’t really free. There are companies that specialize in gathering user’s information in order to sell it to hungry spammers.

What you can do:
• Have multiple email addresses. In our modern time, it is common for someone to have more than one email address. Not to mention there are so many companies that offer free email addresses (i.e. Yahoo.com, Hotmail.com, Lycos.com and soon Google.com). The reason you want multiple email addresses is simple, you designate one email address for junk mail. The tricky part is how you determine whether or not to give your main email or your junk email address. Give out your main email for:
o Friends & Family(As long as they don’t send annoying forwards)
o Businesses that disclose a privacy statement
o Schools
o Trusted Sites (i.e. Google, MSN.com, ebay.com and so on…)
o Business contacts or business purposes
o Online businesses that carry the BBBOnline logo (http://www.bbbonline.org/)
For all other email requests, give out your junk email address.

• Use email filters. Most email providers provide email filters that you can configure through your options page. For instance if you get harassing email messages from a specific person each time, you can filter out any incoming message with that persons email address in the “From” line. Or you can configure the filter to search the subject line for specific keywords like ‘debt’ or ‘mortgage’.

• If you use Outlook 2003, there are updates available from Microsoft that enable outlook to have spam filtering features. If you don’t have the latest version of outlook, there are many 3rd party programs that offer spam filtering capabilities. Just go to www.download.com, do a search for “spam” and try a few out.

Utilizing these tips will greatly reduce your chances of receiving spam, if not eliminate them all together. But just remember this; they can’t spam you, if you don’t give them your email address.


-- Doc