eHelpOverview
Spam has become a way of life. In an arms-race like fashion, spammers compete to stay one step ahead of the latest anti-spam filtering developments—sometimes they succeed; sometimes they fail. Helping to increase their rate of failure (i.e. reduce the amount of spam you receive) is as easy as adopting safe computing practices that include the four easy steps outlined below.
1. Delete emails suspected to be spam without opening them – Whenever possible, delete spam without opening it. Merely opening a spam email may activate embedded html within the message which can then verify your email address as an active one. The result: you’ll get even more spam.
2. Never open suspicious-looking attachments – Attachments to spam often contain spyware programs or, worse, Trojan horses, viruses or worms. Once opened, any one of these nuisances can easily lead to a frustrating, time-consuming and, potentially, costly removal effort—if they can be removed in the first place, of which there is no 100% guarantee. Plus, these programs or scripts will likely report back to the spammer the fact that your email address is valid. The result: you’ll get even more spam.
3. Never reply to spammers – If you’re looking to decrease the amount of spam you receive, quite possibly the worst course of action you can take is replying to a spammer’s email. Yes, spam messages often have language that leads you to believe that unsubscribing from a junk email list is as simple (and harmless) as sending a reply email with the subject heading “Unsubscribe.” But in the world of spam, nothing is what it seems. The more legitimate a spam message looks, the cleverer the spammer is. Simple is anything but. Replying to a spam email does one thing and one thing only: it verifies your email address as an active once more undoubtedly for the spammer than either of the two ways mentioned above. The result: you’ll get an infinitely greater amount of spam.
4. Use spam protection measures – Much as it seems like they do, spammers don’t hold all of the cards. In fact, we all have an ace up our sleeves in the form of increasingly sophisticated anti-spam software measures. Some of these measures include:
In short, when all available countermeasures are used, you’ll find that spam is a lot easier to deal with.
Informational Resources
For more detailed information on combating spam please consult the eHelp article entitled “Basic Tips for Computing Security” which can be accessed here: http://www.csupomona.edu/~ehelp/security/tips/index.html .
To find out more about Reverse DNS Lookup, Cal Poly Pomona’s latest security initiative to curb spam, please access the following link: http://www.csupomona.edu/~ehelp/email/reverse-dns.html .
