spam

About 3 years ago, I wrote an article regarding junk email (now known as spam). You can read it here: http://duckian.blogspot.com/2003/07/junk-mail.html

Today all free email providers, such as hotmail, yahoo, gmail, give you virtually unlimited space for all your emails, and they all seem to have good spam control. "Why do I have to worry about spam?" you asked. Read on...

Nowadays spammers don't need to wait for your reaction in order to realize your email address is valid; they know it once the images embedded in the spam email are loaded on your screen. Solution: use the Image Blocking feature (or alike).

People like to share good stories and funny things by forwarding email to the people on their address book. Here is a sample of a forward email I got (from a friend called X):

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
From: (X)
To: (30 people on X's address book, including me, of course)
Subject: Fwd: FW: (some subject)

Note: forwarded message attached
.
.

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: (X's friend Y)
To: (20 Y's friends)
Subject: FW: (some subject)
.
.

(the above may repeat several times)
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Imagine this forward chain somehow reaches a person that likes to spam? Just by getting this email, dozens of known email address are ready for spamming, and this can be bad.

The point here is to reduce the exposure of email addresses. Use Bcc, instead of To:, to forward email. This way, all recipients of the email will see you're sending an email to him/her only, while in reality, you're sending it to many, many people, and nobody sees other people email addresses. Try it next time -- your friends will thank you. On a side note, if you don't like such emails, kindly tell your friend to remove you from the mailing list.

When you see a spam (that is able to get into your inbox) coming from an obvious (unknown) spammer, you know what to do -- simply delete it for good.

What if you see an email from eBay, or your bank, or a known source, you'll more likely open it to see what's inside, right? You probably read an email from eBay or Paypal, telling you to update your account information, otherwise it'll be deleted/terminated, and providing you a link to log in. The email looks very legitimate, with proper logos, nicely formatted, coming from a trustworthy person or business. Some people think it's real, and proceed to the webpage and provide sensitive personal information, such as password and credit card details.

Big mistake!!!

The above is known as phishing. What's happening is that someone create such email, and lure those inexperienced users to give out personal information online. You can guess what happens next... The fact is, business (such as Paypal) will NEVER ask for your information in this manner.

That's it for today. If you have any questions or comments, don't hesitate to tell me. Share the knowledge.

Email safe. ;)