According to a recent Symantec(1) report, "spam now accounts for 72% of all email messages." That's a lot of Canadian Drug Stores and fake Rolexes being peddled. It's also a major aggravation. Spammers constantly change their attack strategy, so it's very challenging to eliminate all of your junk email, but there are ways to severely reduce it. For instance: Don't respondNo matter how strong the urge, don't fire off an angry response to the spammers. You'll only be letting them know that they have a live address, ensuring you'll receive more spam. Even if spammers can't deceive you into giving them money directly, they can still earn some cash by selling lists of live email addresses to others. If your address is on such a list, the amount of spam you receive will soar. So what can you do? Report the spam to the authorities. In the U.S., you can forward spam email to spam@uce.gov. You can also report it to your Internet Service Provider and the sender's ISP. Block imagesEven if you don't click any links, an image opening in your email can alert spammers to a live address, too. Oftentimes, this image could be one that's incredibly tiny, only one pixel wide. Automatically blocking all images in your email application helps reduce spam. You can always choose to view images in individual emails, should you receive one that isn't spam and you want to see the embedded images. Safeguard your email addressCommenting on blogs and Twitter can be fun. But be wary of how much personal information you reveal. Nearly everyone knows not to reveal his or her home address, but listing your email address in a comment isn't a good idea, either—nor is it necessary. Many blogs allow other members to send a PM {private message}, (if you allow this option), by clicking on your online handle or avatar. If you absolutely must include it for some reason, be creative, (for example, MyEmail "at"email.com). This thwarts spammer software crawling the Web looking for anything with an "@"sign. Reconsider your email addressIn extreme cases there's one last resort tip to consider: Dumping your current, spam-ridden address for a clean start. Despite enacted laws, sending spam is so simple and inexpensive that spammers choose to ignore the Laws and play a "numbers game."If you've tried everything else, but you're still being overwhelmed with spam, you may want to consider a new, more complex address. Inform your friends and family, and ask them to keep your new address to themselves: It may be hard to say goodbye to your familiar address, but better that than facing a mountain of junk email every day. However, before you consider dumping your current email address, try Eagles Consulting's state of the art spam services through DigiTar, providing you with the advanced technology that businesses use to block spam, viruses and cyber threats and it updates automatically with the newest cyber security prevention data. Call us today at 208.323.2996 or toll free at 800.952.4182 and watch your inbox shrink.
...read more