9 Steps to Combat Spam

Despite steps that everyone seems to be taking against it, e-mail spam shows no signs of abetting. As methods to counter spam get more sophisticated, so do spammers. Here is a concise guide to combating them.

Choose e-mail service provider that filters spam on the server
If your ISP does not filter spam at the server level, it is time to give it a boot. If you don’t want to do so, for whatever reason, you should at least move your mail service to a service such as Windows Live Custom Domains or Google Apps which offer free custom domain mailboxes. If you don’t mind spending a few dollars every month, consider premium versions of these services. With premium versions, you can avoid viewing advertisements while viewing your mail.

Consider a third party spam and virus filtering service
Third party services such as Defender, many of which are based on MX Logic’s filtering technology, allow you to keep your existing mail service and still have your mail filtered for spam and viruses for a small monthly charge. These services are ideal if you your ISP provides you less than optimal service, but you still can’t or won’t move your mail.

Turn on junk-mail filter on your mail client
If your e-mail client has a junk-mail filter, turn it on. Then,

1. Whenever you receive spam in your mailbox add the sender to the blocked sender’s list.
2. Some mail clients like Outlook will allow you to block messages based on the top level domain extension. If you don’t expect to receive messages from Mongolia, Afghanistan, or Romania, for example, you can block those extensions out.
3. Mail clients like outlook also allow you to block messages based on encoding. Again, if you don’t expect messages in Arabic or Vietnamese, you can safely block them out

Turn off message acknowledgements if your e-mail client allows it
Many senders, often for no reason, request delivery receipts and read receipts for every message they send. E-mail is a pretty reliable medium of message delivery. Other than legal proof, the only purpose message acknowledgements serve is to acknowledge the active status of your mailbox. Turn the acknowledgements off.

Use Out of Office messages judiciously
While "I am out of office till such-and-such date. I will reply to your mail when I am back." messages are good for informing senders of your absence, they also notify spammers that your account is active.

Protect your e-mail address online

1. Don’t publish your e-mail address on your web site or post it in news groups. Bots that harvest e-mail by scraping web pages can find it and add it to mailing lists that spammers use. Provide a contact form on your web site it possible, which obviates the need to publish your e-mail address. If you can’t avoid publishing it, publish it as me**AT**mydomain.com or something similar instead of me@mydomain.com. People looking at your coded address can understand it and make the necessary changes to send you mail, but bots can’t harvest it.
2. Don’t sign up for newsletters or open accounts at sites you are not familiar with or don’t trust. If you must sign up, don’t forget to check (or uncheck, as the case may be) the box that prevents the site-owner from sharing your e-mail address or sending you mail that you haven’t specifically asked for.

Protect your e-mail address offline
Service providers such as your bank, insurance company, and utility companies send you a privacy policy statement every year. These statements are worded in such a way that the onus to opt out of receiving promotional e-mail from "partners" is on you. Be sure to check the opt-out boxes and mail the form back to them, or opt out over an automated phone line if you have the option of doing so.

Beware of "Unsubscribe" e-mails
"If you don’t wish to receive communication from us, please reply to this message with ‘Unsubscribe’ in the subject line" is common text you see on unwanted messages. Reply to such messages only if you know the sender. Such messages from unknown senders do little more than confirming to spammers that your mailbox is active.

And when some spam invariably slips through to your mail box…

1. Don’t open it. Especially if it has attachments.
2. Even if a message appears to be from someone you know but has attachments you are not expecting, don’t open it.
3. If you must open it, open it when you are offline. Doing so will prevent pixel tracking verification of your mailbox being active. Spammers, who employ pixel tracking verification, embed an image from their server into their message. When you open the message, your mail client will fetch the image from the server and the spammer will know that your account is active.
4. Don’t open messages that proclaim that "Your payment has been received" or "Your loan application has been approved" if you haven’t paid anyone or applied for a loan.
5. Whenever you receive a message with a link in it, especially if it appears to be from a legitimate sender such as PayPal or your bank, DON’T click on the link. Open a new browser window, and type in the URL of the entity in question. The link may just be a ploy to separate you from your private information.
6. Spam that manages to slip through the cracks despite all your precautions may contain viruses that could turn your computer into a sender of spam. You should have a second line of defense in the form of properly configured firewall and antivirus software.

Get Even
Lastly, don’t hesitate to report spam to the sender’s ISP, or free e-mail service providers such as Google, MSN, and AOL. It may not bring immediate results, but it will give you the satisfaction of doing your bit in combating spam.

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