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How To Identify Spam
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By Lewis Leake
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Most of us have opened our email program and found, alongsidecorrespondence from people that we know, offers for productsfrom commercial web sites. Some of these emails we expect. Wehave asked to be notified of sales and other opportunities orjoined a mailing list offered by the company.
Many times, however, the offers are from companies that we havenever done business with and may have never even heard of. Thisis Spam, unsolicited bulk email, and can quickly lead to amassive overload of your inbox.
Identifying Spam as soon as it occurs is the first step topreventing it from happening again. Once your email address isin circulation with these companies, you are well on your way toa very nasty problem. Advertising from legitimate companies isone form. The rest are for illegal services, pornographicmaterial, questionable products, and fraudulent schemes. It isinvasive and many times illegal. Spam is the worst form of junkmail and a typical reason why many people have to change theiremail addresses.
In best cases, the clue can be found in the subject line. If youare offered quick money or a chance to find your long lost highschool classmate, you can probably guess that it is Spam.
You may be amazed that, as you read your email, that thesecompanies claim a right to send you this email because you havea relationship with one of their ¡°partners¡± or ¡°affiliates¡±. Allthat this may mean is that they bought your email address fromanother company with dubious privacy policies. It is still Spam.
Spammers will try to trick you. Unfortunately for us, Spammersonly need a response rate, by some estimates, of 0.0001% inorder to be profitable. This means that they will usepractically any measure to get you to open it before hitting thedelete button. You may receive an email from Grandma or oneasking for help in the subject line. Before you know it, you arereading their advertisement, if only out of curiosity.
Check the dates and times on any email that you are unsure of.These companies know that many email programs will sort theinbox by the earliest mail sent. As a result, they place falsesend dates and times on their Spam hoping that you will openthem first.
The worst has to be the ones that seem to come from companiesthat you know and trust. They may claim to be from your internetservice provider in the subject line or have a similar addressto that company¡¯s name. It may look like it is from the accountspayable department of a major law firm.
Spammers count on your curiosity and hope that you will respond.Even if you don¡¯t buy anything, they now know that your emailaddress is connected to a live person and, if nothing else, cansell that address to someone else.
Read the To and From fields in any questionable email that youreceive. If the To field is empty or filled with an anonymousaddress, then you have Spam. An anonymous address is typicallysomething like freeoffer@happydays.com.
An address from someone that you do not know through an accountat hotmail, yahoo, or msn is probably Spam. These are anonymous,easy to get accounts that spammers use and then discard whenthey are done. By the time the Service Provider has been madeaware that spam is originating from these accounts, the spammeris gone.
Scrambled, random addresses (X12YT853@yahoo.com) from accountslike these are definitely not to be trusted regardless of thecontent.
Finally, if the email contains a story in which you are asked todo anything to help anyone, check the story out online. Thereare several great websites like truthorfiction.com that willhelp you sort through any potential scams or hoaxes perpetuatedthrough email.
These stories can range from silly pranks to dangerous fraudschemes and may need to be reported to the proper authoritiesbefore someone, like you, finds their bank account drained.
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