The Dangers Of Unsolicited Email
Posted on August 12, 2008
There are many simple truths in today\'s world, and one of them is that if you have an email address then you\'ve received spam. Spam is the common word for the unsolicited emails that we receive. Spam can be annoying, who wants to open their email up to see 200 messages and find out only seven are from people you know. Spam can also be fraudulent attempts to get personal or business information from you (this practice is sometimes referred to as \"phishing\").
If you are familiar with or have had communication before with a company that is currently sending you unsolicited emails, then usually the best practice is to reply to them and ask to be removed from the email list. Sometimes there will even be a link at the bottom of the email saying something to the effect of \"click here to be removed from this list\".
If, however, you are receiving unsolicited email from a company or person who you are not familiar with and have not communicated with before then do not contact them. Many times replying to these types of emails, or clicking their links to be removed from their email list, is just a way of verifying to them that it is an actual working email address that they are sending to. This only encourages them to send more spam your way and also to possibly sell your email address as part of a mailing list.
There are ways to deal with the spam problem. A lot of Internet or email providers have a spam blocker that is already on your email account and just needs to be activated or configured. For details on doing this you\'ll want to contact your provider. Another way to minimize your spam problem is to get an alternate email address. Many people have their main email account be the one that is furnished by their company or their Internet/email provider, but then get a secondary email address from a company that provides free email accounts (Yahoo, GMail, Hotmail, for example). They then use this secondary email account as the email address they sign up for newsletters and other things with. When that email account gets too bogged down with spam, they just register a new secondary email account.
Unsolicited emails can be a problem, in some cases a big problem, but just be aware of how to handle them. Don\'t allow the senders to know they are sending to an authentic email address and never provide personal or account information to these senders if replying.
Mark Allen provides the knowledge you need to protect yourself from a computer virus, spyware, and Internet scams at: http://www.saferemails.com
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