Top tips to reduce spam
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It's said that 80 to 90% of all emails are spam around 120 billion messages per day. Analyst suspect that the cost of fighting spam will cost $140 billion dollars globally in 2008. Cost of spam is not only the extra bandwidth and your important time, but also security of your system. |
Try to create aliases for your emails, for example if your email id is johnsmith, try johnsmith2 or johnsmithnews. It may be difficult to get your company IT to give you multiple email accounts, instead try getting another alias to point to your same email account, that way it'll be easier to create a filter rule to move emails to holding / spam filter.
Buy your own domain name
Getting you own domain name can make your email addresses look more professional and makes it easier to create your own profiles without calling yourself johnsmith20080101! Also it might be a great way to get alternative business address if your company has too much red tape, but get approval from your company first. Some new domain names are .me, .biz, .name. Get a full list from your domain registry, here is a list of registrars. So for about $7 - $10 USD per year you really don't have anything to lose. It's easy to link this to google apps to get 7gigs of storage for 50 users free!
Create alternate business cards
If possible create your own business cards. Depending upon quality of your cards these can cost as low as $10-$20USD for a box of 100. These are great for trade shows and people that you don't want to give your main email address to.
Don't publish your email address online
Never publish your email online. If you really have to try to make it difficult for spam harvesters to extract your emails out, for example johnsmith@example.com to johnsmith at example dot com. Or at least place spaces between the dot or @ symbol. Posting your email address is probably the worst thing you can do to attract unwanted emails.
Never respond to any spam
No matter how tempting it is never respond to any spam, unless you have subscribed for service (if you have done this you should never use your main email account). This will only encourage them to target you more! Never do any of the following:
- Click on any of the links in your spam email
- Don't even download any images from the email, if possible disable downloading of images unless you have asked explicitly to do so. Most newer clients Outlook, Gmail, Yahoo do this for you already. If yours don't change to a client that does!
- Never open any attachments, these might contain viruses or try to steal information from your computer.
- If possible right click and mark the email as spam instead of opening it up and deleting the email.
Learning how to dectect spam / scam
Here are some common tips to detect spam:
- Time, look at the time of the email, most people don't get emails at 1am - 5am in the mornings, treat emails sent at those times esp. if they don't look like your overseas friends as spam.
- If you do really have to click on a link look at the bottom of the page, make sure that it matches the link that you're clicking on! If it's all number (see image then most probably it's a scam!
- Be careful of mis-spelling for example http://bankofamerica.com and http://bank-of-america.com or http://facebook.com and http://faebook.com.
- If the email says "forward this everyone you know", "this is NOT a hoax or urban legend" is a telltale sign it's spam. Instead of just forwarding the email, search key phrases in Google / Yahoo with the word "scam" at the end to see what hits you get!
- If the email is trying to persuade rather than informing the reader, especially if their pushing your emotional buttons.
Never give out information
Never give out any personal information directly from email links, these include, trying to log in, giving out password, personal information, address, phone numbers! Instead try to go to your browser and search for the site and login or even better call up the people directly if they require any personal information.
Another tip is to use password managers, if your password isn't filled out automatically it probably means that this is the proper site! Of course make sure you have a master password set somewhere so that your passwords can't be attacked by some program.
Train your email client / web client
Instead of just deleting your emails, try one of the following:
- Click on the spam / reporting spam buttons on your client. This will tell your client this is spam and most probably move all emails to a spam folder automatically for you. This is generally only available in web clients.
- Block the sender, this will stop anyone with the email address to send emails to your client.
- Block domain, this will block the domain of the user from sending you emails. Just be careful that the spammer hasn't spoof the domain of a legitimate domain. So do a quick visual check before clicking on this!
Get anti-spam software to wash out your emails!
There are lots of anti-spam software out there, if spam is an issue for you try these out:
- Spamihilator - Free tool that claims to remove 98% of your spam from your POP or IMAP accounts
- SpamAssassin - Free tool for Unix and mac platforms. There are windows version but those are paid programs.
- Spammunition - A spam assassin based solution for outlook users.
- Spam Fire - A great solution for Mac users
Don't retaliate but report spam!
Instead of trying to get yourself off the list. Try to report them like to www.spamcop.net, who keeps track of spammers, and sometimes prosecutes top offenders.
Create email filters / rules
This can help you categorize your emails by moving them to special folders / labels, to deleting spam messages all-together. Here are some ideas on creating filters:
- Some people are actually nice enough to mark their emails to let you know if it's spam, try filtering out "[ADV]", "[ADVERT]", "[ADS]", "[Announcement]", "[ANN]", "[ANNOUCE]" from the subject.
- Filter out your subject with some of the following words: watches, cartier, sex, viagra, manhood, adult, medical, enlarge, pills, orgasm, orgasms, sexually, sexuality, porno, casino, trader alert, trade notice, rolex, medications, meds.
- Filter out the body with some of the following words: w4tches, repl1cas, blowjob, britney, penis, phallus, cock, ad0be, micros0ft, viagra, anatrim, pornstars, disc0unts, r0lex, pharmacy, cial1s, amb1en, v1agra, val1um, cial1s, xan4x, merid1a, pharm4cy, cart1er.
click here for a full list of filter words
Never respond to delivery failure messages you never sent
Ever wonder why you are receiving delivery failed message for emails you have never sent? There are a few reasons why this could happen, normally it's a worm or a spammer. Generally it isn't your computer, but it doesn't help to scan your computer or run anti adware software.
Cheat automatic email harvesters
The number 1 way of getting spam is to publish your email on-line, if you really need to do this check out this list of methods to combat spam! Below is a list of methods to stop spam to no.spam@tiphub.com: ...
click here for a list of ways to fool email harvesters