The best (and only) way I know of to stop getting spam forever is to stop using your computer. Don’t get on the Internet from a PDA, cell phone, iPod, someone else’s PC (including the public library), or any other device. Don’t send or receive email. EVER.
Ah, that’s probably not the solution you wanted to hear. It might be effective, but it’s not very realistic. So what can you do if you’re not ready to give up computing and on-line life entirely?
I’ve got several suggestions. For best results, you’ll need to adopt as many of these strategies as you can.
1. Avoid on-line sites that require you to give an email address just to get free access to the site. For the times when you think you have to give an email address AND you don’t want any further communication from the source, instead of using your personal email address, use a disposable email address. You can get a free one from GuerrillaMail or MailEater or SpamGourmet, just to name a few.
2. Set up spam filters to use with your desktop email client. Some are included with the original email program, some are add-ons. Many free ones are available; for Windows operating systems, check for prices and reviews at Cnet.
3. Get a good anti-virus program and keep it up to date. I simply can not emphasize this enough. As if viruses, worms, and trojan horses weren’t enough for all of us to be concerned about, now there’s a potential threat that a current virus might attack infected computers by generating spam.
Earlier this month I wrote about the anticipated April Fool’s Day payload from Conficker. Last week Kaspersky Labs reported that a new version of Conficker (also known as Downadup and Kido) downloads two nasty files to infected machines. One of these programs is a fake antivirus program that presents users with an option to buy a “cure” for $49.95.
The second file is an email worm (known as Waledac) which can steal data from infected PCs and turn them into spambots. Researchers observed one bot which sent out 42,298 spam messages in 12 hours. This is why you need to be extremely careful about opening email (see the next couple of suggestions).
Note for MAC users:This virus doesn’t target you. In fact, very few viruses have been written that affect MACs and most hacker programs distributed by malicious web sites run only on PCs. This doesn’t mean that MACS are naturally more secure (sorry, Brad!), just that there are still so many fewer of them than PCs that the hackers and spammers figure they’re not worthwhile targets. As their market share increases, that could quickly change. So beware. For more info, see the April 7th article in the New York Times.
4. Don’t open email of any kind from anyone you don’t know. Don’t open unexpected email from anyone you do know (it might not really be from them).
If you use a desktop email client like Outlook Express, Eudora, Incredimail, Mozilla Thunderbird, or Opera, learn how to use the preview feature. This allows you to “see” the email without actually opening it.
5. Better yet, use an on-line email service such as Yahoo or Gmail or the web mail readers (e.g. horde, SquirrelMail, Round Cube) available with most domain hosting packages and read your messages on-line. Don’t download any of them to your local machine.
6. Use an on-line spam detecting service like Spam Arrest. This service uses a patented technology that works where many other spam filters fail. This is the one I personally use and recommend. It’s not free, but a free trial is available. You can pay $5.95 monthly or $49.95 for a full year. No contract is required.
7. Unsubscribe from lists that sell your email address or send you spam. These are generally easy to spot.
8. When all else fails, save your energy (and your blood pressure) and hit the delete key. If you’ve tried repeatedly and unsuccessfully to unsubscribe there’s not much more you can do. Replying to spam is usually a useless tactic; it only confirms to the spammer that your email address is a valid one. You could try changing your email address to one that you get from # 1 above.
Do you have another technique that’s worked for you? Please leave a comment explaining it. Thanks.
Leave a Reply