subject: How To Avoid Getting Spammed [print this page] The internet provides us with endless opportunities to seek new information, communicate with other people and even earn a living. However, all this comes at a price and one of the biggest and nastiest are the dreaded spammers. The reality is someone has or will fall victim to spammers and the best thing you can do is limit your risk to it.
The following tips should help to minimise the risk of you getting spammed:
Remember this, your email address is your own personality it is your internet DNA therefore, you need to take the necessary steps to protect it from spam. Be careful to whom you give your email to for example, do you sign up to certain email groups, marketing promotions or do you frequent chat rooms and forums?. Have you checked these companies' policies on how they use your email? It is a good idea to check who you signed up with your email and find out if the company who has it is adequately protecting it. A quick and easy way to do this is to type in your email in a browser and see what results come up. You never know, this may come up with a few surprises for you.
Make sure you protect your main personal email address as this links back to your private and personal details. It is worth doing a check on what mailings list you have signed up to in the past. The internet is not as well regulated as the direct mail industry in terms of passing on your details to other companies for promotional purposes. If you are on a mailing list that you are not sure off then, ask for your email address to be removed immediately. It is a good idea to protect your main email address by creating other secondary emails. With many ISP's you can set up a number of remote emails that you can use to sign up for promotions and mailing lists. You would then try and limit the use of your main personal or business email to people and organisations that you really trust.
When you purchase a computer it will usually come with a bundled e-mail package. A bundled email program has both the internet browser and the email program together. Although, having both the browser and the email program is convenient it can also increase your risk of getting spammed. Spammers and unethical web-masters have neat tricks like malware to pluck your email address from your browser. If you currently use a bundled program you may want to consider using a separate email program that can minimize the risk of getting spammed.
