THE DO'S AND DON'TS OF SPAM

Spam: The do's and don'ts

Spam is the online version of junk mail and generally tries to sell you something in which you have no interest. It is annoying and intrusive and clogs up your inbox. Check out our golden rules of what to do when dealing with spam.

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What is unwanted email?
Unwanted email, sometimes known as junk or spam email, is unsolicited email advertising.
Examples of unwanted email:

Adverts for porn or gambling sites.
Work from home schemes.
Online pharmacies.
Advertising 'Herbal Viagra' and similarly improbable products.
Selling implausibly cheap (pirated) software.
A substantial majority of the email that goes over the internet every day is unwanted junk mail.

How spammers get your email address
Spammers collect addresses in many different ways, including:

Guessing. Spammers use automated software to generate addresses.
Harvesting from websites. If an email address is embedded in a webpage, spammers can use spiders (similar to those used by search engines) to find them.
Online registration. If someone gives their email address to a dodgy website or one with a lax privacy policy, the site owner can sell the addresses to spammers.
From other spammers. It's possible to buy lists of email addresses by the million online.
So-called spam email cancellation services. These bogus services offer to block unwanted email but really collect addresses.

Why stop unwanted email?
It wastes bandwidth.
Filtering it manually is very time-consuming.
Unwanted email often contains offensive images.
It propagates online fraud, such as phishing.
Often contains viruses.

How to spot spam
Filtering email manually is time-consuming but here are some tell-tale signs you can use to do so if you only get a limited amount.
From someone you don't know.
Contains weird misspellings (e.g. 'p0rn' with a zero), designed to counter spam filters.
Offers something for sale.
The subject line and contents don't match.
Contains a beguiling or urgent call to action ('Buy now to get 50% off').
If you get more than a handful of unwanted emails a day, we recommend you use a mail filter to get rid of the rubbish automatically.

Do's and don'ts
We've prepared a checklist of do's and don'ts that we hope will help you tackle most spam issues. As ever, the best protection against spam, viruses and the like is adequate security protection.

1. Set up a separate email address for visiting sites on the internet such as chat rooms and message boards.

2. Never reply to junk mail as this confirms to the sender that your email is valid. In many cases, even asking to unsubscribe from the mailing list will verify that your email address is active.

3. Make a complaint: Don't waste your time complaining to the person who actually sent you the spam. Instead - try and find who is providing the spammer with internet access and complain to them. You may be able to find this information by looking at any website or email addresses the spammer uses in the body of the mail.

4. Never, ever give out personal information such as bank details in response to an email request - you could be a victim of what's known as phishing. If in doubt, telephone the company that is asking you for your details and find out whether the email is genuine.

5. When registering with a new site, make sure you do not give that site permission to sell your address on to potential spammers. Look for check boxes that opt you out of future communications by third parties.

6. Set up filters on your mailbox in order to file or reject incoming messages.

7. Sending spam from an Internet Account is usually a breach of the servers Acceptable Use Policy. So tell the abuse team and they should take action.

8. Never forward a chain email. Many spammers use hoax emails to gather addresses for future spamming. Plus, you may be unwittingly forwarding on a computer virus.

9. Before clicking on a link in an email or opening an attachment, have a think about how genuine it is. Often spammers can identify those who've actively engaged with emails and use those addresses for further targeting. If you do want to open an attachment, save it to your desktop first and have your anti-virus software check it out.

10. Finally, if you have your own website don't put your e-mail address in a 'mailto' tag. Spammers have special programs that can scan the internet for addresses.

11. And most of all don't use your real email address in online classified ads and the like that do not disguise your email address from spammers or use a form to email you. Disguise your email address like this for example yourname"at"hotmail.com instead of yourname@hotmail.com, as robot spiders crawl the web looking for real email addresses showing on web pages.

Report a spammer and spam the spammer back!