If you’ve got an email account, you’ve had to put up with spam, or UBE (Unsolicited Bulk Email). It’s inconvenient, annoying, and can cause damage. Spam can open you up to the risk of malware, adware, and spyware. It can put your personal information at risk. Fortunately, there are steps you can take to minimize the spam showing up in your inbox.
• Don’t get on spam lists. Don’t post your email on websites or other public sites.
• Use a second (or third) email address. Use a separate address for anything public. If you buy something online, sign up to get information or post on public forums, use your public address. Keep your personal and work email addresses for friends and work contacts.
• Check privacy policies of sites when you are filling in forms. Make sure that they don’t sell the information to third parties. Some have checkboxes if you don’t want to be on mailing lists.
• Use good Internet security software that will block spam. Trend Micro™ Titanium™ security finds and blocks malicious links in emails and IMs and also blocks email and image spam.
• Use a firewall.
• Most email programs allow you to set your own spam filters. Learn how to use your spam and junk mail folders. You can choose to set the level at low, medium, or high. High will block out the most spam, but it may also block some mail that you want to receive, so you may need to check your junk mail folder periodically to make sure that mail you want to receive hasn’t been designated as spam. You can allow or block senders as you wish.
• Don’t respond to spam, even to request that your name be removed from the mailing list. If you do, you are confirming that your email address is valid. You may even receive spam that looks like it came from your own email address. Don’t open it.
• Don’t open spam. And if you do, never click on any links contained in the email.
• Don’t reply to emails asking you for personal information.
• If you do find a piece of email that is spam in your inbox, make sure you take advantage of “report” functions on web mail sites. This way, not only are you contributing to the fight against spammers, but you are also reducing the chance of receiving email from that spammer again.
• Create an approved or safe senders list. Email from anyone on the list will come to your inbox.
