Content

• Steps
• Advice

Spam has become a permanent problem online. While spam can be easily overlooked, accidentally clicking on a spam's link can cause you to be attacked by a virus and steal information or data. Be proactive in blocking spam sent to you, your inbox will be very grateful to you!

Steps

Part 1 of 3: Identify Spam

1. 

   Check the sender. Spam always comes from unknown senders or is often sent from unknown email addresses. That doesn't mean that all unknown emails are spam. Announcements, webmaster emails (password reset, authentication request, ...) and many other content can all be sent from locations unfamiliar to you.

2. 

   
   
   Check out the links. Click only on links from trusted senders. The ultimate goal of spam is to get you to click on a link. If the email contains a link and you can't recognize the sender, chances are it's spam. Hover over any link to check the destination in the browser or in the status bar of the email user.

3. 

   
   
   Spell check. Spam is often misspelled or has strange use of words, including odd capitalization and sentence breaks. In many cases, they also have meaningless paragraphs at the end of messages.

4. 

   Read the message text. Any email saying you have won a contest you have never entered, offering you a derelict money, or promising free electronic or pharmaceutical devices legal. Every email asking for your password is problematic (legitimate websites always have automatic password reset programs). Please ignore any requests from strangers.
   • Many email services have preview functions, allowing you to read content without opening the email.

5. 

   
   
   Check the attachment. Malware and viruses often disguise themselves as attachments. Never download an attachment from a sender that you don't trust or think will send you an email. advertisement

Part 2 of 3: Spam Prevention

1. 

   Do not publish your email address online."Robots" (a program written to exploit email addresses from websites) can quickly collect thousands of email addresses from websites where email addresses are publicly available. At the same time, sometimes people also use email on websites to subscribe to receive free items (iPod, Ringtones, TV, ...).

2. 

   Make sure your email address cannot be scanned. In case a contact information is required, do it creatively (I'm yahoo com). There are many ways to represent email addresses that still make it difficult for automated spam bots to take advantage of them, including using images for emails or using Java code to dynamically display email addresses. ..

3. 

   
   
   Don't set your username the same as your email address. The username is almost always public and in that case identifying your email is as simple as identifying the correct email service to supplement the back of the email. This is even easier with services like Yahoo! Chat when all users have email @ yahoo.com. Avoid using chat rooms associated with your email address.

4. 

   Use multiple alternate emails to identify and eliminate sources of spam. Create a primary account, then create different accounts for different purposes (one for friends, one for entertainment sites, one for financial services, ...).
   • In gmail, you can add a "+" sign to your address. For example, you can email subscription for news as [email protected] if your email address is [email protected].
   • Set forwarding to your primary account for all of the above. Thanks to that, you do not need to waste time checking multiple email accounts.
   • If you start receiving spam from one of the alternate accounts, you can determine where it came from and deal with it simply by canceling the account.

5. 

   
   
   Never reply to spam. Answering or clicking the “Unsubscribe” link will get you more spam, as your email address is now confirmed to be active. The best way is to report spam and delete them using the steps below. advertisement

Part 3 of 3: Blocking and Reporting Spam

1. 

   
   
   Block and report spam in Gmail. Most spam is detected automatically and moved to the Spam folder, where it will be deleted after 30 days. If you believe spam is in your mailbox, check the box next to the message and click the "Report Spam" button in the upper toolbar.
   • If you did accidentally spam, you can click the Undo link at the top of the page to restore it.
   • Every time you report spam, Gmail's automatic mail filtering improves.
   • If there is a valid email in your Spam folder, select it and click the "Not spam" button. Only do this when you are sure about the email.

2. 

   
   
   
   
   Block and report spam in Yahoo!Mail. Yahoo! has a very strong spam filter and almost all spam will be automatically sent to the Spam folder. If you believe your inbox contains spam, select the dialog box next to the message and select the "Spam" button in the upper toolbar.
   • You can add senders and domains to the Blocked list.However, this may not be of much help because spammers often change addresses or only use temporary domains.

3. 

   
   
   Block spam in Outlook. Outlook provides Junk Filter with Low protection installed by default. This will only block most potentially spam messages and move them to the Junk folder. You can increase the filter protection by selecting the Home tab and clicking Junk. Select "Junk E-mail Options". Select the Options tab and set the filter to your desired level.
   • Each filter protection level is explained. The High level can even move valid emails to the Junk folder, so you need to check Junk regularly.
   • Install a third-party spam blocking program. There are a variety of third-party spam filtering options available for Outlook. These utilities provide advanced filtering and updated anti-spam information. Some popular utilities include: DesktopOne, SpamAid, and Spam Reader ().

4. 

   Reporting spam. Before deleting, please forward your spam to: [email protected]. This is the Spam box of the Federal Trade Commission (FTC). Emails sent here will be investigated. If it is indeed spam, the original sender could be fined $ 500 per message. The more messages that originate from the same spam source are sent by different users, the higher the likelihood that this source of spam will be investigated.
   • You can report spam to anti-spam organizations like SpamCop or KnujOn. These are organizations that report spam sources to internet service providers (ISPs) and government agencies.
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Advice

• If you wish to join directory services, BBS (Bulletin board system) or social networking sites, most likely, you will first look for email contacts on the web. If countless bounces are returned, the site may be insecure and remember never to give out any of your information!
• If you need but do not want to give an email address to authenticate an online account, you can use [email protected]. Mailinator.com does not require you to sign up for an account, you just need to check the mailbox with the optional name. Also note that other people can read the email sent to mailinator.com as long as they can guess the name you use. At the same time, emails sent to mailinator.com last only a few hours before being deleted and any email attachments are automatically removed.
• Alternatively, you can use https://meandmyid.com. This service allows you to create loads of unique and private emails. These emails will be forwarded to your personal account. Thanks to that, the security is guaranteed and you only need to block or delete the addresses that are attacked by spam.
• Avoid clicking links in Wiki articles. Now that post spam has appeared, they are randomly inserting links on the pages that provide the writing service. Another form of spam is spam bots that generate random pages about topics, such as UGG boots. These pages also contain spam links, regardless of whether or not they have any association with the topic or are even well placed.
• There are two things you need to do to determine if your email address or website is in trouble.
  • If you have a website, open the Contact page in a browser like Firefox and check the source page. Usually, you'll find it at View> Page Source. In the source window, press Control-F (search) and type @. Press enter. Hold down the F3 key (search again) until all @ appears in the snippet. Note that everything looks like an email address. If this happens, contact your website's maintenance department and insist on asking the site to be protected from spam bots.
  • Search for your email address on Google, or any other search engine. If you find the source of the statistics page that contains your email, immediately contact the owner of all of the above pages and ask them to remove or protect the site for you.