What you see here’s not a test; I’m a’warning you - beware!

If you reply to spam and don’t give a damn; you’ll get stung, and they don’t care.

They sent out spam; damn, to the people on the Internet; jammin’ up the servers;

To the spam spam boogie say up jump the boogie, to the rhythmic unsolicited beat.

I said delete, fail, I just can’t compete, I’m findin’ spam - spam - in all my email…

No doubt that, despite all attempts at filtering, from whichever source - be it anti-spam software on your own computer or at your ISP – there is spam getting through and appearing in your inbox. What you do with that spam will affect the amount of spam you receive in the future.

You see a rather strange looking email which, upon opening, is clearly spam. It asks you to click a link to find out how to increase the size of a part of your anatomy by ten times so that you can wear a fake Rolex on it perhaps, or some such idiocy.

You don’t want to see this utter drivel in your inbox, so you go to click the “Unsubscribe” link so that you’ll avoid getting any more.

STOP! Never never click any link in a spam email!

If you unsubscribe from spam then you’ve just informed the spammer that the email address that the spam was sent to is a verified active email address. In other words, you’ve just increased the spammer’s potential income no end. Your email address is now worth its weight in gold and the spammer will sell it as a verified email address to as many other spammers as possible. The amount of spam you’re going to receive has just increased by a massive amount.

But the above is only the least of your problems: When you clicked the link you were connected to the spammer’s website. When the spammer’s server sent you a page saying that you’ve been unsubscribed, along with several other pop-up windows of spam offers that might interest you, it also sent you a trojan that set up a SMTP server as a background process and dropped a piece of malware onto a couple of your ports to open them without being detected.

Welcome to the Botnet! You’re now unknowingly part of a distributed computing initiative, run by a criminal gang, serving spam and illegal porn to everyone. Your computer might also be used as part of a DDOS attack on a legitimate company, too. In fact, now the spammers have control of your computer so there’s no telling what they might use it for!

The same would have happened if you’d clicked the link to view their offer, too. That’s why you should never click any link in a spam email.

Some people think that to get revenge on the spammer they can just return the spam to where it came from and bombard the spammer’s server with a taste of their own medicine. The spammer is overwhelmed - not with their own spam but with glee when you do this. You’ve just confirmed that your email address is active…see above.

The best advice I can give you is this: when you get spam in your email - as soon as you realize that it’s spam - delete it. Don’t read it; don’t forward it; and whatever you do don’t click any links in it. Report it if you can to your ISP or the relevant authority, yes; and help get the spammer closed down, traced, and prosecuted.

Make sure that your incoming mail is your delight, not a spammer’s delight.