How To Fight Spam

How to Have a Cleaner Inbox with Lesser Spam

"Spam" is a very popular term used frequently on the Internet to refer to unwanted and unsolicited e-mail and unwanted postings at blogs, newsgroups, forums etc. Spam is also known as junk mail. These unwanted messages are usually intended to trick the recipient into buying a product or service of some kind. Everyone receives spam and we all hate it. Some estimate the level of spam being sent to be more than 90% of all legitimate e-mails. The senders (known as spammers) do not ask their recipients beforehand if they want to receive such e-mails and usually distribute messages to millions of people at once.

So why is spam a big problem? Spam costs money. Every e-mail message has a cost associated with it because transporting data across the Internet costs money because access providers must invest in transmission and capacity as Internet traffic increases. The cost is shared by everyone who uses the Internet. Spam can also slow the Internet's performance. Large volumes of junk can slow down e-mail delivery for hours.

So what can be done to avoid and fight spam?

1. Do not open any spam emails and, of course, do not reply to any spam emails. This will only mean that you will receive even more spam because the spammer will then know that your e-mail is active and exists. Never buy anything from spammers. If people don't buy anything from them they won't earn any money and will eventually stop spamming.
2. Do not use your e-mail address in competitions, game sign-ups or anywhere you do not trust the site. If you would like to participate in online competitions or game sites, you can use a free web mail account at, for example, hotmail, Gmail or elsewhere.
3. Do not forward jokes, chain letters etc. that are sent to you. Some of these are created by spammers in order to find e-mail addresses.
4. Do not make your e-mail address visible to the public on websites, forums and blogs. Spammers have robots that crawl the Internet to find e-mail addresses. If your e-mail has to be visible, write the e-mail in a picture or use the format nameREMOVETHISdomain.com.
5. Use an e-mail anti-spam filter. SPAMfighter Anti-spam is a very good and effective solution. It is powered by a community of over 3.8 million users. Whenever a member of the SPAMfighter community receives a spam mail, he or she can block it. When a certain number of people block the same mail, it is assumed to be spam and is automatically removed from the rest of the community.

Posted in: