Fighting Online Spam

Online Spam has grown to such an extent that internet users have started to suffer from lack of confidence in emails as a mode of communication and even the spread of computer virus is another area of disturbance. In 2003, President Bush signed the 'Can Spam' bill, in December of 2003 which is the first national standards around bulk unsolicited commercial e-mail.

This bill stops senders of bulk commercial and unsolicited emails using misleading return addresses which hide their true identities and using dictionaries to produce such emails – incidentally this bill was voted by the Senate at 97 to 0. This is a serious subject and any email that is sent and that is legitimate must have an opt out provision which is a very important rule for the sender to follow. The law bans senders from procuring addresses from different sites and violation can entail up to one year in jail.

Even with saying that there are email bots searching the internet constantly for unprotected email addresses so they can use them to send bulk email spam. Many countries one being Russia still has many Bulk Email Spammers sending out unsolicited emails many times  a day which is actually reducing the efficiency of the internet and is becoming a very big problem.

We need to remember that large numbers of spam are now arriving from other countries. Since many of these emails emails originate from other countries not just Russia, it is nearly impossible to control them. Because of the global barrier and lesser environment and restrictions in which the internet works, these laws may sound fine but are incapable of handling the large scale problem. So what do you do about this?

Here Are The Top 5 Rules To Protect You From Online Spam.

1. The net is the last place for your email address to be advertised. There are products called "spam spiders" or "Email Bots" which are used for scanning the internet for the only purpose of collecting email addresses to build a large mailing list. If the word 'spam spider' triggers your interest do a search for this word on the net, the results might just shock you. To understand this menace more here is what Wikipedia has to say about Email Address Harveting.
2. Purchase software that can block email spam. Research  several programs not just the first one you come accross which would help you with this, for example, Paretologic Spam Control , PCTools internet Security or what I have been using for more than two years Avg Internet Security. It could be a possibility that you wish to go for a professional version simultaneously but even if you do this, install the software as it could save you many precious hours. The software is not foolproof, but they really do help although you will usually have to carry out some manual set up to block certain types of email.
3. Take the approach of having many email addresses. There are several free email address you could choose from through which you could receive newsletters and have another address as a back up. Imagine giving your private mobile number to your friends and your business number to all others.
4. A common problem with spam is that they have attachments and attachments can have viruses. Companies are equipped with spam filters which protects you. But personal email is free country for spammers. General rule of thumb: if you do not know who is sending you something, DO NOT OPEN THE ATTACHMENT. Secondly, look for services that offer filtering. Firewall vendors offer this type of service as well.
5. These days email services can be found with the facility of 'having programs such as spam assasin installed to prevent malicious spam from reaching you. If what you use currently does not support this, think about moving to a new provider. The concept is simple. It starts with some one who you do not know sending you emails. All you have to do is to collect such mails and put then in a bulk email pile and 'choose' to let them dwell in your circle. The software used for blocking spam would also use the same guiding principles but when you have a few extra layers it could make a critical difference so you might need to give it a closer look.