Spam emails are a pain. They interfere with your mailbox and can cause serious damage to the security of your website or devices. More than 300 billion spam messages are sent every day threatening users with malware.
So can you get rid of them?
The truth is that you cannot eliminate spam 100%. What you can do is reduce the amount of spam you receive. Today we are going to talk about several preventative measures you can take to keep yourself safe.
What is spam?
Spam or junk mail is an unsolicited message that is sent to a person without their consent. These messages are usually sent en masse to different email addresses for advertising purposes or more sinister purposes like phishing and identity theft.
How do spammers find your email address?
Spammers use various methods to obtain your email address. Let’s see some of them.
- Harvesting: Spammers use bots to harvest email addresses from websites on the Internet. These bots work in a sophisticated way, mainly focusing on the most popular “@” sign.
- Random generator tools: yes. Shipping addresses can be randomly generated as usernames and passwords. Spammers take advantage of software tools designed for this purpose to obtain address lists.
- Your email is visible on social media platforms: Many users publicly list their email addresses on their social media accounts, making them fake ducks for spammers. Posting your email in public comments and posts will also make you a target for spammers.
- You have a common email address: Using guess words and common names in your email address makes it easy for spammers and their tools to predict and attack you.
- Providing personal information to unsafe websites: Providing sensitive credentials and information to questionable websites is a gateway to spam and other malware.
Why is spam dangerous?
As mentioned above, companies and online services can use spam for commercial purposes as part of their marketing campaigns. In hindsight, trusted services don’t use spam to promote their business. In some cases, when you receive a spam message from a legitimate source, you most likely have been compromised.
You should also worry about malicious spam emails that cyber attackers send out to steal personal information. These messages almost always contain infected links or files. Attackers typically disguise themselves as legitimate entities and ask you to click a link to be directed to a fake website or download an attachment to install malware on your system.
7 ways to protect your email from spam
Although spammers are constantly trying to find new tricks to launch spam attacks, there are some effective precautions you can take to protect your mail.
Do not give your email to anyone
It is always safer to treat your email address as you would any other personal information, such as your social security number. Give it only to necessary contacts or important business contacts. This way, only a limited number of people or contacts will have your email address, greatly reducing the chance of receiving spam.
Another useful idea is that if you need to access a website but need to provide your email address, you can always use disposable email. This is a fake email address that you can generate for free from certain websites created for such purposes.
Create different email addresses for different purposes
If you need to subscribe to different online services, please create an email account for this purpose, separate from your personal email. Also, separate your work email from your personal email. In other words, using an email for everything you do online is not recommended.
Although this will not limit the amount of spam email you receive, especially to a public email account, if one email is affected, your other accounts will not be affected. The single account can be managed separately.
Use email filters
Today, many email providers offer you the option of email filtering to prevent spam. It is up to you to enable this feature and adjust the filter to block any unwanted or potential spam emails.
Some service providers even warn you when you receive an email that its source is unknown, so it could be spam. Others redirect spam (when the filter feature is enabled and customized) to a spam folder or even a spam folder.
Customizing these filters includes blocking emails with specific titles, content, or sources.
Do not click on unknown links
If you ever receive an email from an unknown or suspicious source with a link included, it’s most likely spam. If you click on that link, it may be a gateway for the spammer to do more damage.
Clicking on the link may send more spam or download malware to your computer.
Block accounts that send spam
Learning from our mistakes is one of the best security measures we can take against spam. If you keep getting spam emails from a certain account or service, you can easily block those email addresses through your email account settings. This will prevent you from receiving more spam.
Do not reply to spam email
You need to reply to some spam emails to confirm that you have received them, or you may want to reply to the spam emails to ask them to stop sending you or just to vent a little anger. In any case, you should never reply to spam emails, as this can have more negative results.
If you reply, the spammer will know that your account is active and will add your address to every mailing list, which will lead to many more spam emails.
If all else fails, create a new email account
If you’ve tried all of the above methods and you’re still getting a lot of spam, you may want to consider creating a new email account to replace the compromised one.
We understand that this does not sound very convenient, but we highly doubt that all the above methods will not work. Consider this your last contingency plan.
final thoughts
Although the rate of spam generation isn’t slowing down and spammers will always get in the way of email transmission, you’ll find a number of ways to defend your mailbox. By applying the security techniques described, you will be more aware of spam traps and will be able to avoid them.
Categories: How to
Source: HIS Education