|
Recommended:
books
Recommended
AV product:
| |
How to Stop Spam!
You don't have to face an inbox full of
porn, spam, scams and junk every day. Here's how
to stop it.
Do you receive lots of junk email messages from
people you don't know? Offensive porn? Lottery
scams? Junk pushing "male enhancement", deliberately
misspelled so your spam filters won't catch them?
There is a way to stop the spam and it won't cost you a penny. Here's
how, in 6 easy steps:
- Get a new
email address. Most ISP’s (the phone or cable company that provides your
internet connection) allows you to create from 5 to 10 email addresses at any
moment. If you’ve run out of these, sign up for a free
Yahoo or
Gmail email account. Even if you already have one, just sign up for
another. You can call this address something like yourname4family. This will be
your secret email address for trusted friends and
family.
- Get another new email address.
That's right, you will need at least 2. Use a name
like yourname4unknowns. This will be your general
email address.
- In each address control panel, import
names / email addresses from you existing contact
lists. Both Yahoo and Gmail can import!
But delete anyone clueless or not trustworthy from
the first email address's contact list - you don't
ever want to send them a mail from there!
- Now, using the first email address,
yourname4family@yahoo.com, send an email to your
trusted closed friends and family. Do
not send it to
- casual acquaintances,
- people who are careless or clueless about
using and maintaining anti-virus software on
their computer,
- anyone who forwards email chain mails,
- anyone who sends out mass distributions with
many email addresses in the TO or CC fields -
that exposes your email address to people who
you do not know.
- people, even family members, who seem to
always have viruses and troubles with their
computers
- anyone you don't know well
- any website sign-ups, mail lists, etc.
Aside from your closest and most trustworthy,
computer friends and family; Keep this email
secret!!!!
- Now, the second email address is the one you
give out to other friends and family, general use,
when you need to sign up for a mailing, and anything
else.
- Keep your old email address for a couple of
months, until your sure that everyone is converted
over to one of the two new email addresses. After
that, you can ignore it, or discard it.
Now, you will find that your new secret email address
will be spam-free! So will your second email address,
although since you use this for more public sources and
less intelligent friends; from their sloppy habits and
virus-ridden computers will eventually harvest your
second email address and pass it on to the scammers.
How do spammers get your email address?
Here's the real secret: there are many ways that
spammers obtain your email address, but it is most
commonly from malware on clueless friend's computers,
that harvest every email address in their Outlook
address book. That's why you must never tell them your
secret email address!
When your second email address starts getting spam,
just change it again.
Eventually even your first email address (the secret
one) will be discovered by the spammers. When that
happens, just change it again - remember Yahoo and Gmail
will give you as many email addresses as you want.
And one last secret - the spam filters that Gmail and
Yahoo use are better than anything in Outlook!
For More Information
The FTC works for the consumer to prevent fraudulent,
deceptive and unfair business practices in the marketplace and to provide
information to help consumers spot, stop, and avoid them. To file a
complaint or to get
free
information on consumer issues, visit
www.ftc.gov or call
toll-free, 1-877-FTC-HELP (1-877-382-4357); TTY: 1-866-653-4261. The FTC enters
Internet, telemarketing, identity theft, and other fraud-related complaints into
Consumer Sentinel, a secure, online database available to hundreds of civil
and criminal law enforcement agencies in the U.S. and abroad.
|
