What is Spam - Email Security
Spam is unwanted email. It is email that a user has not requested for, or is expecting. Spam emails are also known as junk or bulk emails, are sent by spammers, usually attempting to legally or illegally sell products or services. Spammers send copies of an email to as many users as they can. Today over 90% of email’s are spam email. This was a major issue around the world, and was taking up an individual’s time deleting spam mail and using business resources such as bandwidth, until security solutions hit the market filtering spam on the perimeter of the network. Laws have been put into place to prosecute spammers; however spam email seems to be on the rise all the time. Spam email is also known as unsolicited (Not looked for or requested) email.
Where do spammers receive email address from?
Email addresses are collected from a number of sources as detailed below;
- Websites, most commonly when a user purchases a product or service and specifies their email address as part of an online transaction
- Sold by criminals who have somehow retrieved a bulk of email accounts
- Newsgroups, Forums and Blogs
- Viruses which harvest users address books
- Chat rooms and other sources
Email addresses are exchanged or sold to other spammers.
How to avoid being spammed
- Avoid giving out your e mail address to anyone, such as the sources mentioned above in this article
- Avoid signing up for free offers and ensure you tick the option, not to participate in receiving future promotions/offers
- Create a 2nd e-mail address so you can use this for signing up to services your not sure about
- Check with your ISP, they may provide spam filtering software, of if your using a web based account utilise any of its anti-spam services
Further Reading
Wikipedia's guide to Spam