How to Stop Spam in your Email

by: John Chan

Spammers commonly find email recipients by using a spambot by searching for addresses on websites, forums, or Usenet groups, for example. Another way is to use a name generating type of software which produces likely common words, names, or numerical combinations of email addresses for the sole purpose of sending spam. The more popular an ISP, the more spam is mailed to its members.

If you currently receive unsolicited email on your desktop, you can get it filtered out through settings at your Internet Service Provider’s gateway, the network email server or email gateway, or through your own antispam software or filter on your computer. You have the option of purchasing a wide variety of spam blocking or filtering software---or you can download freeware or shareware as your solution to the spam problem. The problem is that with some of these software options the quality can be quite low and the filtering not really effective. You will find that a combination of strategies, such as using a separate email address, adding some recommended antispam software by experts to your computer, for example, will go a long way toward reducing levels of spam in your mailbox.

For example, the use of content based filtering based on the header of the email is somewhat helpful, but spammers are now changing spelling or some phrases in order to escape the phrase detecting spam filters. Content filtering can be put into action by analyzing the spamming URLs in the body of the email. The URL cannot be concealed as it must have a domain name. The list of these links and reporting them to a list of spamming websites is a good way to stop the much of the spam.

Sometimes many email users use a disposable email address, which is a temporary address that forward mail to your real account. A few services do offer disposable address forwarding. Addresses can be eliminated, or have an expiration date after a certain time period, or can expire after a certain number of messages are forwarded to the address. Or you can use that address to receive email and that you can close or abandon the email address whenever you want.

Another tip is to steer clear of responding to spam, even by responding negatively or complaining about the spamming email. By responding, you are informing the spammer that you have a valid email address. This is probably one of the worst things you can do as it could lead to even more spam as a result. So the last tip is don’t ever respond to spamming emails.