Most people have experienced spam in their email at some time or other. It has become an
unnecessary evil in our mailboxes for longer than we probably think.
Spam is generally unsolicited email from an unknown source trying to
sell you something that you don't want.
Spam is a growing 'business' and evolving all the time making it very difficult to keep up with. Most email providers will protect against as much as they can but here are a couple of things that you can do to protect yourself:
- Install a good anti-virus system on your computer that protects your email
- Delete spam messages immediately
- Don't unsubscribe from spam messages, you will likely get sent even more!
- Don't share any personal information in an email - emails are highly unsecure and can be read by anyone who really wants to
- Never open an email from someone you don't know or you think is unsafe
- Don't open an attachment from an unknown email address
- Use Spam filters that your email program has
- Don't publish your email on a website (At Anyware we protect your email address when we place it online so it is secure)
- Don't use your personal email address when registering to websites, newsgroups, chat rooms or other unsecured services
- Don't use a preview pane in your email software as this will open the email and may open potentially harmful viruses to your pc
Most spam senders have been using jpg (pictures) format as an attachment in their emails. Most spam anti virus programs now stop these emails.
In a recent development, PDF files have started to be used as spam attachments. This is a concern as PDF files have become a commonly used format in emails, in last months Anyware Insights you may remember we ran a subject on the usefulness of PDF files. We still believe this, but you need to protect yourself against these emails.
Do not open a PDF file from an email address that you do not know or looks bizarre.
An example of a bizarre email address would be this: nnvhz@free.fr. This is clearly a spam email address and should be deleted immediately.
You can easily protect yourself against spam if you take some simple precautions as outlined in this little article. If you require further information on email spam, please contact us and we will help where we can.
