What You Must Know About Spam

What Is Spam?

When referring to emails, according to the NCES (National Centre for Education Statistic), "Spam refers to electronic junk mail or junk newsgroup postings. Some people define Spam even more generally as any unsolicited e-mail. In addition to being a nuisance, Spam also eats up a lot of network bandwidth. Because the Internet is a public network, little can be done to prevent Spam, just as it is impossible to prevent junk mail. However, the use of software filters in e-mail programs can be used to remove most Spam sent through e-mail."

Some search engines use the term to describe websites that try to attain a high listing rank by submitting identical or mirror pages. In this article I am going to give you a few tips about email Spam.

If we give a too general definition to the word, we might end up taking for Spam perfectly legitimate emails. Not "any" unsolicited mail is Spam. Spam means unsolicited bulk email.

If a message is unsolicited that doesnt make it Spam. The same goes for bulk. A message is Spam only if it is both unsolicited and bulk. When you receive an unsolicited job enquiry, you do receive an uncalled-for email. But is that Spam? No. What about a newsletter? That is bulk, but no Spam if you are a subscriber.

Why Do You Get Spam?

Have you posted your email address online in forums, chat rooms, on your website? Than why do you marvel? Spammers gather the addresses from the Internet; so no wonder your own found its way onto a spammers list. Besides, spammers use different other means to get what they want: viruses, Trojans, buying from other spammers.

Spam Scams

How many times have you received an "update your account" email from paypal, a bank or ebay? How many times have you received a "warning message"? Maybe it didnt look suspicious to you as it came from an institution you work with, but was it really that way? This kind of emails is referred to as "phishing scam". There is not much you can do when this happens. Just dont click on any links in that email, dont give away any confidential information such as social security number, bank account or credit card number. There are some free tools that can protect you against known phishing websites. For example download the free EarthLink toolbar and report the scam to the Anti-Phishing Working Group.

What about the emails from different Nigerian (or other nationalities) citizens offering you a percentage of a vast sum of money? Yes, youve got that right: scam. Youll only loose your money on this one. Better dont be curious. They will ask you to pay a fee in advance a so called transfer tax, and guess what: some complications will appear, you have to pay more and more and end up with nothing. And dont believe the "you won money" lottery sweepstakes either. Youll only spend. The same goes for the Nigerian purchase scam: they want to buy something from you, pay by check and they wish the goods to be sent in Lagos, Nigeria.

A Major Dont

Dont reply to spammers ever! Dont send any "remove me" message. By doing so you confirm your address is active, you show you read bulk messages, you prove your ISP doesnt use Spam filters. You are the perfect candidate. You will never be removed. On the contrary

Spam Fighters

If Spam really bothers you and you want to fight against it, than you have plenty of possibilities. If you are an American, join Cauce at: http://www.cauce.org/ If not check out Cauces international partners (example: EuroCAUCE for Italy, Spain, Germany, Holland, France, Norway).

Associations such as to the Anti-Phishing Working Group, the American Federal Trade Commission (FTC) or other volunteers organizations are there to help protecting you against scam or other illegal emails (children pornography for example). Detailed information about Spam, Spammers and ways to fight against them you can find here: http://spamhaus.org/

Mihaela Lica is a skilled journalist and PR consultant, founder of Pamil Visions http://www.pamil-visions.com/

Previously she used to work as a military TV redactor for Pro Patria and the Military Media Trust within the Public Relations Directorate of the Romanian Ministry of Defence.

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