Archive for August, 2009

The very word ‘spam’ has a petrifying effect on Internet users all over the world and for good reasons. It is the herd of spam mail that inhabits our inbox, thus potentially tiring our fingers and wearing out our spirit in fighting spam. Not to mention the costs of fighting the abuse, which generally involves handing the cleaning or filtering job to your Computer Consultant or IT Support Provider. So, a spam is apparently nothing more than an unwarranted email forwarded to us by some fowl thinking individuals trying to sniff out our confidential data and put them to their good use.

 It seems that researchers all over the world have laid great importance on this grave issue of internet security and have successfully devised a series of guidelines which one might find useful in fighting spam.

 Stop Responding to Phishing Mail

One should dodge the risk of responding to suspicious mails because this not so prudent act might risk the privacy of their personal information. Junk mails should be deleted without opening them. One should abstain from replying to mails suspected to originate from an unauthorized source.

 Be Cautious While Divulging Your Email Address in a Public Forum

At times it becomes necessary to post your email address in public platforms like chat rooms or news boards, but, with a little prudence, a contorted version of the address should be posted. For example, one can change a few characters of the address ( like davyjones@gmail.com as DxxvyJO12s@gmail.com) and post it.

 Be Cautious about Links

Spam mails often contain links to fake sites that tends to coax the users into giving out their personal details. Users are usually lured with cash prizes or other gifts. One should be careful before clicking such links. Same applies to attached documents and pictures. There is ample probability that these attachments are nothing but viruses all set to ruin your system.

 Best way to defend your system from this hassle is to check credibility and authenticity of the mail before downloading. Microsoft Outlook Express has this feature preset in it, applicable to email addresses not included in the address book.

 Never Trust the sender Information

One should take care in downloading attachments in a mail from a known address because tricksters have the resources to spoof email addresses.

Be Prompt In Reporting a Spam Abuse

In case a spam mail is received from a trusted source, do not hesitate to make them aware of the spoofing. In case of reporting via email, it is advised to send a fresh email than replying via the spoofed mail. It would be better to call up any toll free number (if provided).

The aforementioned points are a few useful precautionary measures suggested to curb spam abuse. In case the precautions falls short of delivering, one can resort to several software available for this purpose.

Spamex is one such software which helps us to hide the original email address and stop the inflow of unwanted mails. It is also capable of tracing the source from which the mail address was allegedly leaked. It also helps to change or modify the existing email address, making the fight against spam smoother in the process.