Spam Email - Don't help it spread!
No one likes spam or
unsolicited email, so you would have taken some basic steps to avoid your email address from getting into the hands of spammers.
Don't enter your email address on websites you don't trust, particularly those that offer free downloads in return for your online details.
Use a contact form on your website or encrypt your email address so that spam email harvesting programs can not get your details and add them to databases that are sold for mass marketing.
If you get an unsolicited email from an address you don't recognise with a subject that doesn't mean much to you, delete it without opening, don't be curious as the email could have hidden code to tell the sender that your address is valid, and therefore worth selling to email spammers.
Having done all that you can do to avoid being a receiver of Unsolicited email, isn't it frustrating when you suddenly start get spam on a new personal email address and you begin to wonder how did these people get my details! Maybe you or a personal friend of yours actually gave it to them!
Chain letters
I remember getting one of these paper chain letters when I was in secondary school, nowadays with the internet, it is so easy to send spam chain letters, and they don't seem that innocent or easy to ignore.
How many of you have received an unsolicited email about a young girl that went missing from a small town in mississippi whose parents are desperate to find her and now need your help by asking you forward it to all people in your email contacts list. There is a photo of an adorable young girl in this spam email and even details of the detective working the case, so you automatically think this is authentic and forward it to all your mates! Well you've just helped to spread some spam email, but more importantly you could have just contributed to having your friends details ending up on a spammers database!
Getting on Spam Email Lists
Many people forward these chain letters (say a prayer for a friend, lost person, fight for a cause petition) to their friends, and these forward it on. If you've ever looked at any of these chain emails, have you noticed the number of email addresses that they contain as they get forwarded from one person to the other? Sooner than later, one of these emails gets forwarded to a spammer who glees as the addresses get added to their database and before you know it, people start get emails for viagra and stuff!
I know this for a fact, not only because I'm an email administrator whose had to deal with spam email for years, but also I've experienced it first hand. A personal email address which I've had for years and only share with close friends was forwarded to others in one of these facebook alerts, and within a week, I started getting spam!
So before you start forwarding these emails to others think twice, and if you do have to forward an email on to others, make sure you remove any existing addresses, and use the bcc field for all addresses! Don't be a contributor to spam email, think before you click send!
Labels: messagelabs, postini, spam email, uce
