Receive Less Spam
Did you know that, calculated on a worldwide basis, the IT cost of dealing with spam will rise from $20.5 billion in 2003, to a staggering $198 billion by 2007 (The Radicati Group)? That is a lot of spam! Beyond the annoyance factor, spam eats into our productivity, costs money, and sometimes carries viruses. What can we do to reduce the amount of email spam? Plenty, read on.
- Never reply or try to unsubscribe from spam. Spammers normally uses sophisticated programs to blindly blast out emails. By replying or unsubscribing, you are letting the spammer know that they have found a real working email account. You are now the perfect candidate for more spam, your email name gets labeled as “confirmed deliverable”, and the problem compounds. If you didn’t originally opt-in, do not opt-out or reply.
- Setup a secondary email account. There are many free online email accounts available, like Gmail, Hotmail, MSN, YahooMail, etc. Setup a secondary email account and use this for any type of registration. This could be an online registration, printed product registration cards, or any other place where you are asked to provide an email address like for newsletters, subscriptions, membership directories, or online groups. This strategy keeps a large volume of emails out of your personal email inbox. Check the secondary account once every few weeks, quickly skim the subjects for anything meaningful, globally select all, and delete.
- Be careful where you post your email address. Posting your email address on a website leaves it subject to be picked up by spammer email scraping programs. If you are going to list your email address on a website, ask your web programmer to encode your email address. This is a simple step that greatly reduces spam. Here is a link to a very detailed and technical article on how to encode your email address: http://www.entrepreneurs-journey.com/519/how-to-reduce-your-email-spam-by-75/.
- Update your email filters. Most email programs, Microsoft Outlook, Outlook Express, Mozilla Thunderbird, have the ability to add individual email filters. Spend 10 minutes and learn how to use them. Once you get the hang of it, you can add a new filter in seconds, almost the same amount of time to recognize and delete the email. If you want a more aggressive approach, there are programs that you can use, spamMatters, SpamAssasin, and Spam Bully, that can help reduce spam as well.
- Report the unwanted spam to the Federal Trade Commission. Send a copy of unwanted or deceptive messages to spam@uce.gov. The FTC uses the unsolicited emails stored in this database to pursue law enforcement actions against people who send deceptive spam email. Does it help? Yes. Suspected “King of Spam” Robert Soloway, was recently arrested in Seattle for sending billions of spam emails.
- Do not purchase anything promoted through spam. If you receive a spam email and are interested in the offer, go to a search engine and find the same product elsewhere. Do not support the spammer by purchasing the product.
- Do not forward chain emails. Who wouldn’t want free M&Ms or to collect a huge inheritance from our long lost Nigerian relative? Remember, if it looks too good to be true, it probably is! The same is true for emails alerting about a new virus. Before you email everyone in your address book about a virus, be sure to check to make sure it isn’t a hoax. A good source is: http://www.symantec.com/avcenter/hoax.html.
- Learn more. Visit www.spamhaus.org for detailed information about the fight against spam.
Hopefully these tips will help you reduce your spam intake. Good luck!
