How Can You Control Spam
You can control spam when your E-mail inbox it gets out of control.
If you receive more spam than real e-mail, you should take steps to
reduce your spam or improve your spam filtering. The easiest way for you
to control E-mail spam is to prevent it in the first place, so consider
spam control when you're establishing an online identity.
One
way that spam reaches your inbox is when you register for things
online. Many manufacturers now allow you to register new products online
for warranty protection. Other sites require you to register to become a
member and post or use services. Regardless of what you're registering
for, use a separate e-mail address when you sign up for any sort of
registration. It's probably not a good idea to use a "junk" e-mail
address to sign up for your bank's online account services or online
bill-pay products, but give everyone else an alternate registration
address. Then the manufacturers can send you tons of e-mails or sell
your address to anyone they want, and you still won't see those annoying
e-mails showing up in your inbox.
Don't publish your address
Some
professional spammers use bots to crawl Web sites and pull as many
e-mail addresses as they can find. Other spammers target specific sites,
forums or guest lists and collect e-mails manually. Regardless of which
method a spammer uses to get your address, the results are the same:
tons of unwanted, unsolicited e-mails in your inbox.
Don't give
spammers easy access to your e-mail address. Don't publish your e-mail
address on your personal site. If possible, use a secure form for people
to contact you. If you must list your e-mail address publicly, don't
use symbols but instead write it out entirely; i.e.,
sam(AT)hotmail(DOT)com. If you write out your e-mail address in this
manner, live people can still contact you easily but spambots will have a
more difficult time capturing your address.
Use a good spam filter
If
you use a free Web-based e-mail service, you must rely on the spam
filter of your e-mail provider. Do some research before you sign up for a
free service to find one that has a good spam filter.
If you use a
service that processes e-mail through Outlook or another external
e-mail client, you may be able to add spam filtering software to your
account. Spam filters allow you to set rules to automatically send spam
to the trash and enable you to create "good" and "bad" lists to let
e-mails through or prevent them from reaching your inbox. Some antivirus
software suites include spam-filtering software to help reduce your
spam, while other spam filters are standalone products. Be aware that
spam filters may accidentally send wanted e-mail to your spam folder, so
you should check it regularly for mistakes
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