Avoiding Spam - General Computer

SPAM is a real pain, but there are some things you can do to try to avoid it.

Basically, the first line of defense is to keep your email address secret.

How do you do this?

1. Do NOT allow it to be posted on the web anywhere. Spammers use search tools to scour the web for email adresses. How do you know if it is out there? Type your email address into Google and see if it comes up anywhere. If it does, get it taken off of the site you find it at.

2. Don't give it out to just anyone, especially online. It is fine to give your email address to your friends, and to reputable places like Walmart.com who will not sell your address to other people. However, don't give it to "fast easy credit reports online now." Basically, if you know who the company is, and can trust them, then give them your email address. Who can you trust? Anyone you would give your credit card number to. If that is Amazon.com, then you can trust them. If you won't give your credit card number to any place online, then don't give out your email address either.

2a. You may consider getting a second email address just for 'giving out' to places like this. Something from a free email provider like hotmail or yahoo mail. Then you can just check that address when you need something from a certain place, and ignore it the rest of the time.

3. BLIND CARBON COPY! When you forward an email to 25 people, and use the Carbon Copy feature, everyone gets everyone else's address. So now your dog groomer has your Great Aunt Sally's email address. Not a big deal you say, the dog groomer probably won't SPAM. No, but if your dog groomer gets a virus that harvests her address book, your Great Aunt Sally may wake up one morning to 100 SPAM messages! The solution? BLIND Carbon Copy. When you send to a group, use the BLIND Carbon Copy feature of your email program. That way the addresses are not shown to every recipient.

The bottom line is, protect your email address from being "in the wild."

That won't stop every SPAM, but it can make the difference between getting 10 a day and several 100 per day!

The next step is "spam filtering" software, but that is a whole different topic.
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Christen
Antioch Christian Church Technology Committee

Posted: Sat Jun 17, 2006 10:09 pm Post subject:

That is great information! I never knew some of those things. Thanks!
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For I am confident of this very thing, that He who began a good work in you will perfect it until the day of Christ Jesus. -- Philippians 1:6

Posted: Thu Aug 16, 2007 2:37 pm Post subject: I wonder.

Along with the great idea’s to help keep your email address safe from spammers. I have a thought, I was wondering about. We all get emails wanting us to read or do something then email all those in our address book as you pointed out in the article about spam. I figure if just 1/3 of those that get these types of email do as they are ask, it would not take long before there would be a lot of email saying the same thing. Now if there was a bunch of different types of emails out there doing asking others to do the same thing. Wouldn’t be logical that this would slow the internet down? Laughing

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GW's Thoughts