Great strides are being made in creating programs that can stop spam from
reaching you. At the same time, spammers are taking great strides to circumvent
these programs. Again, you’ll probably never be free of spam, but there are a
few things you can do to stem the rush.
Create Two Email Addresses
One of the simplest actions you can take to prevent spam is to create two
email addresses—one for personal email and the other for junk. Use your junk
email address for anything that might result in receiving spam, such as
websites that require your email to register but don’t state that they won’t
sell your contact information in their privacy policy. Limit the use of your
private email address for friends and family—just the people you trust. And
protect that address. Ask people that receive email from your private address
to protect that information as well (such as deleting it when forwarding
messages you sent).
Spam Filters
Spam filters rely on keywords to determine if a message is spam or not.
These filters can be reliable and effective. Check with your email provider to
see if they have a built-in filter. If they don’t, you can purchase one.
Keyword filters, however, have their drawbacks. Because they rely on
keywords to identify spam, they can erroneously mark a legitimate message as
spam. Take, for instance, the word “breast.” Many keyword filters will mark
this word as a keyword for spam offering pornography. But what if that message
was a newsletter from the National Breast Cancer Society? Keyword filters can
be a two-edged sword in this regard.
Additionally, spammers can work around keyword filters by not including
keywords in the text of their messages. The next time you get a message about
Viagra, look to see if “Viagra” is actually in the text of the message.
Remember, the text of the message does not include the gif or jpeg that is
downloaded with the message. Keyword filters only “read” the text of a message,
not the image. Often times, spammers use incoherent text, or horribly
misspelled text, in their spam all with the hopes of fooling a keyword filter.
So, while spam filters can stop some spam, it won’t catch all of it. Or it
may catch things you don’t want caught. If you have signed up to receive an
internet publication, find out what your service provider is doing to block
spam. If their efforts would block the emails you want to receive, fill out a
request that they be allowed to pass through the blocks.