Preventing Spam Clogging up Your Computer

If you use the internet to communicate then you are probably already fully aware of the problems that spam can cause. Spam simply means unsolicited messages and these are normally sent through email. It's been estimated that around 80% of the total volume of email traffic is actually spam.

Cost of Spam

Many people get annoyed at spam but they don't realize that it's also actually costing them money. We all have to waste a considerable amount of time manually sifting through our mailboxes to sort out what is genuine and what is spam. This time could be spent better by doing something else. Businesses lose billions of dollars as a result of spam.

Spam blockers can be used to save everyone time; however these also have their own cost. Not every message that they flag as spam is actually spam. This can mean that it's very easy to miss important emails accidentally.

Tips to Beat Spam

We should all treat spam like a war and there are a number of things that you can do to fight against it. If we don't take a stand now then we will be inundated with even more examples of spam. There are some tips that you might like to use to arm yourself in this fight against spam.

Leaving Comments

When you're leaving comments on forums and message boards you should consider using a disposable email address. You can sign up for a free Gmail or Yahoo account. You could also sign up to one of the many temporary email address sites which will provide you with a time limited address. If you ever find out that people have started to spam your free account then it's really easy to close it down and set up another one.

Create Different Email Addresses

You don't just have to have one email address. You should set up a number of different email accounts all of which can be for different things. Don't use your everyday account when you're shopping on the internet for example. Keep your business and personal emails separate. This means that you are reducing the risk of suffering from spam.

This doesn't even have to be inconvenient as it's possible to have all of the email accounts delivered into the same email client.

If you own your own domain name then most hosting companies allow you to set up forwarding rules. This means that any email address at your domain name will be forwarded to a particular domain name. This makes it really easy to create new email addresses without having to do anything. If these emails do start to get abused then you can just block the email.

Listing on Your Website

It seems like a wonderful idea to include your email address on your homepage so that people can get in touch with you. However, this is never a good idea. You should make use of email cloaking to protect your email address and stop bots accessing and recording it.

Don't Bite

If you do get sent spam then make sure you never take the bait. Never buy whatever they are selling you, never click the links and certainly never reply. Whatever you do will leave you open for more attacks in the future and could also expose you to computer viruses.

(0 Comments)