Kicking Spam Out of Your Inbox
Spam simply means that people are sending emails to people that haven't requested them. Spam is named after a fairly unpopular canned meat product, and the electronic form of spam is just as unpopular. If you suffer from spam then you might be looking for a way to stop the spam so that you can carry on with more important tasks.
Spam is more than just a nuisance because it is actually starting to cost us all money. It's estimated that businesses in the US lose around $100 billion every year due to lost productivity. Dealing with spam is time consuming and irritating.
ISP
Your first possible solution would be to talk to your ISP. Many ISP's include spam blocking features and filters to protect their customers from attacks. Depending on the spam filter software included, this might work very well and you might also have control over who is added to the black list.
Alternatively, you can consider signing up to a free email account which has built in spam blocking features. You might like to keep a couple of separate email accounts for different purposes.
Antivirus or Firewall
Some of the more popular security suites will include a spam blocker for free. These are an effective way to filter out the spam from your computer. Some antivirus applications offer discounts for customers who want to find a way to block spam.
Change Your Email Client
If you're looking for a free way of protecting yourself from spam then you might like to upgrade your email client. Instead of using Outlook Express which is included with Windows, you might like to give Thunderbird a go. Thunderbird is made by the same people that make Firefox and is very popular. This has a great free spam filter that works really well.
Privacy
Whenever you are posting anything on the internet you must be careful that you never use your main email address. It's a good idea to sign up to a free account if you are considering doing this.
If you want to include your email address on a website then make sure that a robot can't read it. Robots scour the internet looking for email addresses to add to spam lists. You can do this by saving it as an image rather than as text.
In a similar way you should avoid having a contact us link which links to your email account. Instead set up a simple web form which will email the results to you. This prevents robots and spiders from accessing the information. You might also like to use Captcha tests to ensure that only humans are getting your details.
Don't Load Images
You should set your email client up so that it doesn't download images by default unless you request them. This is because the spammers will be able to look at which images you have opened. If they see that the images have opened then this means that you have read the email. This is a great way to get more spam, so don't do it!
It's impossible to stop all spam because it's such a major problem. The best that you can ever hope to do is limit it. Spend time to reduce the effect that spam has on your life today.
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