Content

• To step
• Part 1 of 3: Recognizing spam
• Part 2 of 3: Preventing spam
• Part 3 of 3: Block and report spam
• Tips

Spam has become a regular part of our online life. Even though it is easy to overlook spam emails in your inbox. If you accidentally click on it, you can get viruses on your computer or become a victim of identity fraud. Fight spammers by immediately blocking all spam you receive and taking measures to prevent new spam emails. Your inbox will thank you.

To step

Part 1 of 3: Recognizing spam

1. Check who is the sender of the email. Spam almost always comes from unknown senders who often have strange email addresses. Of course, that does not mean that all emails that you do not recognize are directly spam. Newsletters, emails from websites where you once registered (for example, when changing your password or confirming your account) and many other types of email messages are often sent from email addresses you may not recognize .
2. Look for links in the emails. Only click on links sent to you by people you trust. The sole purpose of spam is to get you to click on a link. If you receive an email message with a link in it and you don't recognize the recipient, chances are it is spam. Move your mouse over the link so that you can see in your browser or in the status bar of your e-mail program where that link points to.
3. Check the spelling. Spam emails often contain misspelled words and phrases that are strangely worded. Examples include the use of a lot of capital letters and punctuation marks that are used in a strange way. Many spam messages contain nonsense texts at the end of the message.
4. Read the message. Messages telling you that you won a contest that you never entered, offering you money that has not been claimed by anyone, or offering you free electronics or pills are never real. Also, all messages asking for your passwords are never real (all real websites have a feature that allows you to automatically change your password). You should always ignore questions and requests from strangers. If you do internet banking, your bank will do too never ask for your login details.
   • Many email services and programs have a feature that allows you to preview the email message. This way you can read a message without actually opening it.
5. See if the message has attachments. Malware and viruses are often disguised as attachments to emails. Never download an attachment from a sender that you do not trust or that you did not expect to receive a message from.

Part 2 of 3: Preventing spam

1. Do not post your email address openly on forums and other websites. Robots (scripts made to search websites for e-mail addresses) can very quickly collect thousands of addresses at once from websites where the e-mail addresses are public. Sometimes they are just people who pull email addresses from websites and use them to sign up for something and get free stuff (iPods, ringtones, televisions, etc.).
2. Make sure your email address cannot be recognized by robots. If you need to provide your contact information, write your email address in a creative way, like me [at] yahoo [dot] com. There are also alternative ways to show your email address to make it difficult for spambots to recognize your address. For example, you can create a picture of your e-mail address and show it or encode your e-mail address with JavaScript so that spambots do not see that it is an e-mail address.
3. Make sure your username is not the same as your email address. Usernames are often public and the only thing a spammer has to do is find out which domain name to paste after it. By Yahoo! Chat makes this even easier, as anyone using it probably has an email address ending in @ yahoo.com. So do not use chat rooms where your username is based on your e-mail address.
4. Use disposable addresses to identify and prevent spam. Make sure you have a main account for your email, then create separate email accounts for other purposes (one for your friends, one for logging into various sites, one for work, etc.).
   • Set up those email accounts to forward the messages to your main account so that you don't have to check all of your accounts separately.
   • If you start to receive spam, you can find out which of your addresses you are getting it from and simply delete this account.
5. Never reply to spam emails. Responding to spam or clicking the "Unsubscribe" link will only add to your spam because the spammers will now know that your email address is real. It is therefore best to report and delete spam using the steps in the section below.

Part 3 of 3: Block and report spam

1. Block and report spam in Gmail. Most spam messages are automatically recognized by Gmail and placed in the "Spam" folder, where they are deleted after 30 days. If you receive a message in your inbox that you believe is spam, check the box next to it and click the "Report Spam" button in the toolbar at the top of the screen. This is the button with the exclamation mark on it.
   • If you do this accidentally, you can click the "Undo" link at the top of the screen to retrieve the message.
   • Whenever you report spam messages, Gmail improves automatic spam filtering.
   • If you have a message in the "Spam" folder that is not a spam message, check the box in front of it and click the "Not Spam" button. Make sure it is not a spam message before taking this action.
2. Block and report spam in Yahoo!Mail. Yahoo has a strong spam filter so that most spam messages are automatically placed in the "Spam" folder. If you see a message in your inbox that you think is spam, check the box next to it and click the "Spam" button in the top toolbar.
   • You can add senders and domain names to your blocked addresses list. This probably doesn't help as much as spammers often change email addresses or use temporary domain names.
3. Block spam in Outlook. Outlook has a pre-installed spam filter that is set to the security level "Low" by default. Messages that are clearly spam are filtered and placed in the "Junk E-mail" folder. You can adjust the security level by going to the "Home" tab in Email and clicking "Junk Email" in the "Delete" group. Then click on "Junk E-mail Options." In the "Options" tab you can then set the desired protection level.
   • Each level of protection is explained here. If you set the level to "High", real email messages may also be placed in the "Junk Email" folder. So check this regularly.
   • Install a third party spam filter. There are several third party spam filters you can install in Outlook. These provide more options for spam filtering and are regularly updated with the latest anti-spam information. Popular filters include DesktopOne, SpamAid, and Spam Reader.
4. Report spam. In the Netherlands you can submit a complaint on a special website of the Authority for Consumers & Markets (ACM) if you have received a spam message. This is possible with this form. An investigation is then started. If it actually concerns spam, ACM can issue a warning to the sender or impose a penalty or fine.
   • You can also report spam to anti-spam organizations such as SpamCop and KnujOn. These then report spammers to internet providers and government agencies.

Tips

• There are two things you can do if you find out that you have a problem with spambots on your website or if your email address has been picked up by spambots.
  • If you have a website, open the contact page in a browser like Firefox and view the page source. In most cases, you can do this by right-clicking the page and then choosing "View page source" or a similar option. In the page source screen, simultaneously press the control key and the letter f (Search) and type an at sign (@). Then press Enter. Keep pressing F3 to continue searching until you have found all the at signs in the source code. Write down which ones look like email addresses. If you find addresses, contact whoever manages your website and ask them to protect the website from spam bots.
  • Search for your email address with Google or another search engine. If you see that your email address is listed on one or more websites or in the source thereof, please contact the owners of these sites and ask them to delete your email address or protect it from spam bots.
• If you want to sign up to a directory, forum, or social networking site, first search the site with a search engine and see if you can find anything similar to email addresses. If you find many e-mail addresses, the website is not secure and you should not provide them with your personal information!
• Do not click on links in wiki articles. A well-known tactic is to publish random links to websites that offer paper and essay writing services. Another tactic consists of spam bots that create random web pages on topics such as Uggs. These pages contain random links to other topics. It does not matter whether or not these links are related to the topic of the site or even grammatically well written.
• If you need an email address to confirm an account on a particular website and you don't want to give them your own email address, you can use [email protected]. You don't need to create an account on mailinator.com; just check the inbox for the name you chose. Just be aware that anyone can see the emails sent to mailinator.com if they can guess which name you used. On mailinator.com, your email messages are also only kept for a few hours and attachments are automatically deleted.