|
DAWN
Canada: DisAbled Women's Network Canada
Expanding our Horizons: Tech 3 Project
Privacy
& Security Online
Protect
Yourself Against Spam
Is
your inbox flooded with unsolicited ads for sweepstakes, fake diplomas,
and porn? Find out how to duck all that spam.
The following are
some useful strategies to protect yourself against spam; they have been
amended from an article written by Jack Karp dated July 27, 2001.
Maintain a spam
email account.
Web-based email accounts are free and easy to set up. Get one that is
intended specifically for spam. Don't use it for personal and work communications,
but give it out when signing up for mailing lists, posting to newsgroups,
or shopping online.
Don't give out
your real email address.
If you don't have a spam email account, leave the space for your email
address blank when filling out online registration forms. If the site
requires you to enter an email address, you can fill in a phony one.
Make an address up, or if you want to be especially sly, supply the
email address of your favorite spamming company.
Don't reply.
Never reply to spam. Replies are how spammers verify that an email address
is active. If you reply to a spam email, you are practically asking
to receive more spam.
Don't even open
spam.
Some spam messages are programmed to contain Web bugs, which notify
message senders when email they sent has been opened. Spammers use these
Web bugs to tell that your email address is valid and active. They can
do this even if you don't reply to the email; opening one is enough.
If you know an email message is spam, delete it without opening it.
Screen for spam.
You can program your email client to filter out certain messages, including
those that don't have your correct email address, have subject lines
in all caps, have a lot of dollar signs or exclamation points, or have
words like "unsubscribe," "X-priority," "adv,"
"bulk email," "authenticated sender," or "make
money fast" in the subject lines. You can also note the domains
from which you receive a lot of mass email and block messages from those
domains.
Get a spam filter.
Many Internet Service Providers (ISPs) now come with a spam filter that
can be added to your existing email client. EarthLink offers one called
Spaminator, and Hotmail provides one called InBox Protector. You
can also purchase Novasoft's SpamKiller at http://www.spamkiller.com
for $30, or download one for free from Spam Bouncer at http://www.spambouncer.org
Mung.
Address munging, also known as spam blocking or spoofing, refers to
altering your email address when posting to newsgroups and bulletin
boards so that spam bots will either not recognize your email or send
spam to an illegitimate email rather than to yours. For example, you
can change cybercrime@techtv.com to cybercrimeATtechtvDOTcom, or to
cybercrime@zechzv.com (replace t with z), or even see_my_sig@for.my.real.address.
For more information,
visit this extensive FAQ on address munging at http://members.aol.com/emailfaq/mungfaq.html
Get unlisted.
Contact Internet directories such as WhoWhere at http://www.whowhere.lycos.com/
and 411 at http://www.411.com
and ask them to remove your name, email address, and personal information
from their databases.
For more general
anti-spam resources, visit:
|