How can I reduce SPAM? (Tips and Hints for e-mail user)

Member Name: The Duke

Product:	Tips and Hints for e-mail user
Date:	29/01/07 (394 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Less spam, possibly none!

Disadvantages: Might need to set up new email accounts and use more than one.

There are two questions to consider when thinking about spam and your email account. The first would be "Am I already getting spam?" and the second is "How can I protect myself from future/further spam?"

If you're not already getting spam, then you must be doing something right! However, there are still things you can do to prevent the possibility of spam in future and the good news is, there's little or no money involved. The same rings true even if you're already getting some/loads of spam.

If, like me, you spend a lot of time online and join up to a lot of websites, it might be worth considering a second email account. Juggling two or more email accounts sounds like a lot of trouble, but it's not really if you plan it correctly. At the moment, I have around eight email accounts, not including the one I use at work. My main, personal email account is set up with a company here in the UK, 1&1.co.uk. In America, you can hunt out something similar from companies such as GoDaddy.com. For an extremely small sum per year, I get a nice POP3 email account (i.e. can be used with an email program such as Microsoft Outlook or Mozilla Thunderbird) with a nice, personal, easy-to-remember email address. I get absolutely no spam into this account and I've had it for over three years.

The advantage I have with this type of email address is that it's mine and I can access it anywhere in the world and am not tied down to my internet provider, meaning that, potentially, this is my email address for the rest of my life!

Why is this? Well, the reason is partly because it's a specialised email account for purely personal and professional activities such as contact with friends, family and professional contacts. As I've chosen the address myself and it has no visible web presence (as a web site URL), spammers have less to target (more on this later). I access this through my copy of Outlook 2003.

For all my other online activities, I use one of my other email accounts. These are of the 'free' variety as supplied by Google, Hotmail, Yahoo and the like. From a purely personal preference, I would now tend to go for free Yahoo or Gmail accounts as I am led to believe that these are still compatible with email programs such as Outlook Express, Mozilla Thunderbird and the like whereas new Hotmail accounts no longer offer this access for free. My free, "spam catcher" email accounts are accessed through Outlook Express and Mozilla Thunderbird. Using them in this manner cuts down on the work I have to do to check each one individually. As you can see, my personal, private email account is completely separate from my spam catchers.

As an aside, I think it's a common misconception that some, but not all, free email providers are magnets for spammers. I think the general view is that Hotmail especially is a big target, but strangely, GMail from Google is not. I have at least one of each and I can safely say that looking at my two most used addresses (one each of Hotmail and Gmail), there are a lot of spam messages in each. Interestingly, though, I have an old Hotmail address that used to be my personal email address from years ago when I was travelling the world. I think it's attracted two pieces of spam in the six years I've owned it, so from my own experiences, there's more to it than just having a Hotmail account (or not).

If you own one of these accounts, you are probably more likely to be targeted by spammers because it's a lot easier for spammers to blindly send emails to addresses. For example, it's a lot easier for spammers to hunt down an active email account by generating users (via some kind of software) and then appending those to known email providers. Spammers might, as an example, create a string called userx then append it to Hotmail, GMail, Yahoo so that userx@hotmail.com, userx@gmail.com etc. are all targeted.

Getting back to the topic at hand, these free email accounts are used to sign up to various websites on the internet where I cannot guarantee that my email address will not be harvested or passed on. If I joined any forums or websites, I can use these free accounts as a buffer. While I might not immediately notice any extra spam coming into these "spam catcher" accounts (if there is any), I am given the time to verify the credentials of the site itself. It's also important to note that even if a website is perfectly honest, if your email address is displayed publicly anywhere on the internet, it can be 'harvested' by software bots for future use, so keep all emails private whenever possible. Using a "spam catcher" or "throw away" account also means that you can investigate how private your email will be and any good website will let you change email addresses later.

If you're a member of a site that offers an alternative method of communication (such as a guestbook system or a private messaging system), then use these for contacting other members instead of email. Additionally, the prime rule when dealing with spam is not to reply to any messages that could be spam, especially if you find them in your primary email account. All that does is tell spammers that your account is valid and active.

These tips will also help reduce your spam if you currently get some. If you do get some spam, you can investigate the spam filtering methods available to you through your email program. There are often filters set up to help you filter unwanted spam into a spam folder for deletion. You may, if you choose, use a more advanced filter alongside your email program. You can find a good, free one here: http://keir.net/k9.html, which I think is one of the best out there, though I believe it only works with POP3 email, not webmail.

I've found that it's much easier to prevent further spam than it is to reduce it. Therefore, by far the easiest thing to do is to move to completely new email accounts (such as the setup I've described above that I use) and start from scratch. This has the benefit of cutting all spam to zero immediately and protects your private email account into the future, although this isn't always the best solution for people who have had the same email addresses for years. The only negative aspect I've found is that my employer has blocked access to webmail accounts, so I cannot access any spam catcher accounts from work, which is a slightly annoying if I've joined a site during my lunch hour, but the benefits outweigh this detriment.

There are many other solutions out there, some of them software-based, but I've not found a solution yet that's any more effective than the method I currently use. Even though I spend a small amount of money per year on my email account, the cost to me in terms of anti-spam is zero as I would have bought an email account in this manner anyway as I regularly go abroad for long periods and switch internet providers regularly.

To recap:
1) Try to have private and public accounts.
2) Make sure your private account is "private" at all times
3) Use your public ("spam catcher" or "throw away") account for signing up to websites and online deals
4) If you already get spam, you can try a third party filter to reduce the nuisance value
5) Do not display any email addresses publicly if possible

Summary: A few suggestions on reducing spam levels.