ISP Review - Tips For Avoiding SPAM
Tips For Avoiding SPAM
By: Mark Jackson - January 16th 2007 : Page 1 -of- 3
"For many, dealing with the constant influx of junk e-mail has become a nightmare"

Do you need fake Viagra? Fancy having your privates enlarged? Perhaps you’d be more interested in donating an unscrupulous amount of money to an unknown Nigerian national? What? No? Not Interested!? Unfortunately that won’t stop faceless people from all over the world asking you, often repeatedly.

SPAM (junk e-mail) probably wouldn’t be half as bad if it were properly targeted, yet sadly a 12 year old girl is just as likely to receive such messages as a 40 year old man. Unfortunately an even greater problem is the quantity of messages, with some people receiving upwards of 1000 junk e-mails per day!

For many, dealing with the constant influx of junk e-mail has become a nightmare. Until laws are strengthened and legal action taken then little is likely to change. So what can ‘you’ do? ISPreview has pooled information from around the Internet and come up with a few helpful tips. While nothing can completely prevent SPAM, some of these should at least help to cut it down.

1. Don’t display your e-mail address in public (online)

SPAMMERS use automated systems ("robots") to search websites, newsgroups and various other sources around the Internet. This allows them to extract any addresses that may have been posted in a publicly accessible location. Regardless of whether or not the address works, if it’s there, they’ll find it.

2. Setup several addresses

Most ISPs will allow you to setup several unique POP (e-mail) addresses, which means you can have one address for strictly personal communication, one for business and the last for general use; such as the e-mail used when buying online goods (order registration system).

This balances the workload and gives you greater control over your contacts, thus allowing you to better monitor the addresses receiving the most junk.

3. Make your addresses unique

SPAMMERS can often find addresses simply by auto-generating a list of commonly used names for any one particular domain name. Consequently using a combination of uncommon names/words, characters and numbers in your e-mail name can lessen the chance that you’ll receive a lot of junk.

For example: d.john.9x@domain.com is less likely to recieve SPAM than john@domain.com .

4. Always read the ‘Privacy Policy’

Most legal websites or publications asking for personal details should have a privacy policy (usually linked at the bottom of any given page). This policy document will tell you exactly how any data you submit may be used and why. Some organisations will intentionally use your details for SPAM and only tell you in this section.

In addition, keep an eye out for boxes that can be ticked and ask whether or not the company can pass your personal details onto third parties. For obvious reasons you should always tick the box that requests them NOT to do this.

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