Our email address is our tag to the online world.

We may have many other ways for people to get their message to us if need be, such as Facebook or Twitter, but our email address is our permanent space.

It is our online home.

This is why so many web sites want your email address when they want to either verify who you are or contact you.

They do not ask for your Facebook  or Twitter account unless it has something to do with those services – they ask for your email address.

This is why you must try your best to keep your email address from becoming tainted.

Tainted means that either someone was able to break into your account or you are now receiving a lot more spam messages in the account, way more than normal.

In this article I will discuss several ways that will allow you to still give out an email address but also keep your email address spam-free at the same time.

Spam-Free Emailing

Before I go into tools that will help you protect your email from spam and other things, we first must discuss email security.

It is important that no-one has the password for your email address.

If they do then they could give it out, even accidentally.

The person who is able to get hold of your email account may change the password so that now you are locked out.

They will be able to find out a lot about you by digging through your old email messages so it is very important that you keep your password guarded.

The first thing that you can do to keep your inbox free of spam is to use one of the services online that allow you to have a disposable email address.

There are many services that provide this ability but they may do it in different ways.

Some of the sites will provide for you a fake email address that redirects to your normal email address.

When you do not want that fake account to redirect to your email account anymore you can just shut it off.

how to minimise the amount of spam in your email account

Other services will provide for you a fake email address that you can check in that account.

This method is less a fake email address and more of a throwaway account.

If you decide to use the tools that I described above, make sure you do it with web sites that you do not care about.

If you use them on a serious web site that you might visit a lot, if you ever have problems logging into that site, you might not be able to fix it.

A lot of web sites will send the new password to the email address that you registered with – if you no longer have access to the throwaway account that you used then that can spell trouble.

Sites such as this are perfect for protecting your email account against spam.

Just do not go overboard and use them with all new accounts that you sign up for.

I Have To Give My Email Address To Some Websites – How Can I Minimise The Amount Of Spam I Receive? is a post from: Security FAQs

Most people fail to realize how much money is actually made in the world of spam.

There are so many people that are now connected to the Internet in one way or another, that if you are only able to sell to a small percentage of these people, that can make you very rich.

This is why the incentive to create new and innovative ways to spam people is so high.

Companies that provide email services have tried many ways to be able to fight the onslaught of spam but they have only put a dent into the problem.

Those That Buy Via Spam Are The Root Cause Of The Problem

There are still a lot of people in the world that are becoming new customers to online services and, as long as they are naive about the dangers of spam, the people that create spam will always have a thriving business.

Now the spammers have found a new frontier to attack.

They are sending spam to people through their mobile phones.

With the influx of smart phones, spammers have seen a new opportunity to take advantage of.

Even normal cell phones have the ability to be able to connect to the Internet now.

Once your phone has the ability to connect to some sort of third party network outside of the cell phone company’s control then you have the potential to become a victim of spam.

The ways in which they will attempt to spam you are numerous.

SMS Spam

First they will try to use sms messages.

You will walk down the street and all of the sudden you hear a buzz sound.

This is the sound of you getting a text message.

Instead of a text message, you receive a text from some company trying to sell you something.

This can be infuriating since there are a lot of people that do not have unlimited texting plans.

They will have to pay for that useless text that they just received.

Mobile Email Spam

Also spammers will use your cell phone’s email address to try to sell you something.

This is the same technique as email spam attacks on a computer except now it has been released to the cell phone.

This again can be very annoying.

As a society we have gotten used to spam in our inbox on the computer.

We were hoping that we could avoid it on our cell phones.

There is software out there that will help prevent you from seeing spam in your cell phone messages but it is only marginally effective at best.

The most effective wau that you can avoid getting spam on your mobile device is to not give out your number to people that you don’t know.

Especially do not put your cell phone number in any place that is claiming to give you a prize or some other contest.

This is the main way that a spam company gets their email addresses or text numbers to spam.

Hopefully there is a solution that will be found to fight the large amount of spam that is starting to build up on our cell phones.

If not, we can then look forward to our sms box being similar to our web based email.

Protect Your Cell Phone Number Because Mobile Spam Is On The Rise is a post from: Security FAQs

Some people love being part of an online community and some people love to run them.

They can be a great experience when you want to meet someone and talk about similar likes and dislikes in a public manner.

And even better, you can have a forum that is filled with people with similar likes but sub divided it even more for people who are into the finer nuances of that very same topic.

For instance if you have a hip hop forum, you could break it down even more, to people who like southern, west coast, and northern hip hop.

But there is a dark side of having a forum as well.

As soon as it gets popular, it will become the target for all kinds of negative attention.

Large Gatherings Attract Spammers

Spammers and other malicious individuals will start to seek it out, so they can misguide your users.

They want them to click on links that will make the spammer money.

So most people who run an online forum will just turn on the captcha for new people to register and believe that they have solved all of their problems.

This is not the case and we will go over why.

The first reason why this may not help, is that all captcha software is not made to be the same strength.

Some are definitely better than others.

Most captchas that are out there right now have been cracked by a hacker already.

A lot of these exploits are already public.

There are very few that have not been solved already.

So when you place a captcha on your register sign up page and you feel safe, you are only fooling yourself.

Yes, it is good measure to slow the bad guys down but it is not enough.

There will still be people that get through and they will try to spam your forum with as much garbage as they can.

Why Captcha Has Lost It’s Effectiveness On Forums

The second reason why spammers are going to get past your captcha on the forum, is that they now pay real people to do the posting and advertising for them.

Since the rates to get people to post on forums is very low, they are now a viable option to do this kind of work.

They will create new accounts just for the purposes of putting their employers link in the signature of the account.

They will then make a few postings and threads, and will never be heard from again.

They are from small third world countries and the rate that they make posting is enough to sustain them in their country.

To be able to fight these kinds of tactics, you will have to have a moderator to run your forum.

There are no easy, automatic ways to be able to beat these problems.

Moderators are the only way.

It can be someone from your community that you trust, or it can be someone that you pay.

Somehow, you have to be able to stop these people from spamming your site.

If you do not, then people will surely start to leave.

Captchas are only the first line of defense in stopping spammers on your forums.

If you think that it is enough, you will be soon proven wrong.

Why Captcha Will Only Keep Your Forum Free From Spam And Malware For So Long is a post from: Security FAQs

If you have used the Internet for any small amount of time, you have seen this feature used.

A small box that has all types of crazy letters that you must type.

If you get it wrong, the program will stop you from completing the action that you were trying to get done.

This is called captcha and it’s main purpose is to stop spammers from automated sign ups (typically used for spamming) on a web site.

The lettering is hard to read on purpose.

The harder it is for the human eye to decipher, the harder it is for a computer to be able to read the information as well.

Anti-CAPTCHA

Over time, programmers have found a way to defeat captchas automatically.

Several years ago, a hacker would defeat captchas in one of two ways.

Either they would hire cheap overseas labor to create the accounts that they needed, manually filling in the captcha forms or they would go another route.

That was to create a fake site, most of the time an adult site, and have a captcha form that needed to be filled out.

Once the form was filled, then that person could see the video.

This captcha was for another site and had nothing to do with the video itself.

Now these techniques are no longer needed as much since hackers have figured out a way to defeat captchas.

Defeating CAPTCHA

There was a paper published last month that discussed a number of different programs that could be used to defeat captcha.

Not, one hundred percent of the time but enough to make the program worth it.

This new discovery have put the people who run captcha software companies on their heels again.

Now that they are able to be defeated with any kind of consistency, it makes their product obsolete.

So they got to work and tried to figure out a way to stop this from happening.

What they came up with was the use of video as a deliverer of the captcha letters.

The software creates a 3D image or a small video and the person has to type in what they see.

A video image is a lot harder to decode than a picture with a squiggly line so this might work in the short term.

Also the use of Flash video content makes the video easy to deliver in high amounts.

Flash has figured out how to compress video and still display it on the Internet.

Will this technique work in stopping spammers from signing up to networks with a large amount of accounts?

In the short term, yes it will.

But just like it was hard to defeat the captcha image but eventually they did, hackers will take on this challenge as well.

How Captcha Uses Video To Stay Ahead Of The Spammers is a post from: Security FAQs

Over time, it seems, disposable email addresses (DEA) have become more and more popular.

I myself have many free email accounts, such as Gmail and hotmail, that I use for correspondence that I wouldn’t choose to use my personal email address for.

Other people are getting smarter as they become more aware of the various threats that lurk in every dark, and not so dark, corner of the world wide web.

Hopefully you are such a person who is aware of the importance of keeping your identity safe and secure.

More commonly, perhaps, internet users are turning to disposable email in order to avoid spam.

If you receive far too much junk in your inbox then the rest of this article is just for you.

Using Disposable Email Addresses is one of the easiest ways to hide your real email ID and thereby retain some level of anonymity on the web.

They are also, by definition, of little value and so are easily discarded should when they ever become overrun with spam.

Using disposable email addresses is, therefore, a good habit to develop but where can you find such mail accounts?

Well, free email accounts are plentiful these days but not all are created equal as some are quicker and easier to sign up for than others.

Here Are 5 Of The Best Disposable Emails You Can Use

• Mailinator

Mailinator is the first and, arguably, the most popular DEA service available on Internet.

You can easily create a DEA in seconds and start using it without any hassle.

“Let them eat Spam”, is their tag line and they firmly live up to it.

Best of all, you don’t need to be choosy while you are creating your personal DEA – it could be anything@mailinator.com.

And when I say anything, it means it can be ANYTHING – zombie, superman, batman or joker!

Visit Mailinator

• GuerillaMail

This is another of the most popular DEA services.

The best thing about GuerillaMail is that it offers you an email address which gets disposed off after 60 minutes.

During those 60 minutes you can receive as well as send as many email messages as you want.

Visit GuerillaMail

• MailMoat

The best part about MailMoat is that you can create as many disposable email addresses as you want which MailMoat terms as “aliases”.

You don’t need to check all these accounts on a continual basis, however, as MailMoat allows you to sync your actual mail ID to it.

Whenever you receive any mail, it gets dumped in your actual Inbox.

And when you see that any of your “aliases” are getting overloaded by spam you can simply toss them away.

Visit MailMoat

• 10 Minute Mail

As the name reflects, 10 Minute Mail is a DEA service which offers you Disposable Email Addresses that last for only 10 minutes.

This DEA service is mostly used while registering to a web service on Internet, where you do not wish to giveaway your actual email address.

So you can send as well as receive mails from the DEA given by 10 Minute Mail in that given time frame of 10 minutes.

Visit 10 Minute Mail

• Mail Expire

Like any other disposable email services, Mail Expire provides you with disposable email addresses which can be used to keep your mail box free from spam.

But it also offers an amazing feature, which gives it a cutting edge over other similar services.

With Mail Expire, you can set your own time frame for the account to remain active.

In other words, a Mail Expire email address could die after 12 hours, for instance, or 3 months, according to your own personal needs.

It is this degree of freedom that makes it such a popular service.

Visit Mail Expire

Do you use one or more disposable email accounts? If so, which services would you recommend?

What Are The Top 5 Disposable Email Addresses And How Can They Save Me From Spam? is a post from: Security FAQs

Spam.

We all get it.

And most of us hate it.

So why does it continue?

The obvious answer is that the spammers achieve their aims and objectives by continuing to send unsolicited email.

So what are those aims and objectives?

Well, I’m sure they are quite varied, and different spammers have different goals but here are a few of their main objectives -

• To sell products and receive the resulting affiliate commissions
• To acquire personal information for the purpose of stealing someone’s identity
• To overcome the security measures on one computer in order to breach the wider corporate network
• To install viruses, spyware, worms or trojans
• To capture computers into botnets to facilitate denial of service attacks
• To con people into donating for fake causes
• To acquire further email addresses from address books in order to send out yet more spam

Can you think of any other reasons why an individual or group would engage in spamming?

Why Does Spam Continue? is a post from: Security FAQs

Email spam is one of the biggest concerns for many home as well as business users.

Past records show that email spam has been used to spy on your computer to steal your personal details and spread deadly computer viruses, apart from keep annoying you constantly.

For this very reason, many computer users feel the need to have a highly effective spam filter, which can kill the spam before reaching our inbox.

SpamWeed is the new innovative spam filter that combines many state of the art spam-filtering technologies to achieve a high rate of filtering.

Features of SpamWeed

• It uses statistical techniques to identify spam
• SpamWeed is a highly accurate and an intelligent spam filter
• SpamWeed works with many email clients like Outlook, Thunderbird, Outlook Express, Eudora and various POP3 email clients. The software even supports different webmail accounts like Hotmail and Yahoo.
• SpamWeed is designed to prioritize your email communication thus saving a lot of your precious time. One can classify the email according to the sender and the keyword.
• It has a superb feature of recognizing emails in more than 25 languages and you can even block foreign language spam
• A perfect solution for people who have to deal with thousands of emails daily so that your inbox is less cluttered
• It protects your computer from email viruses as it scans your mails before opening them, not matter who is the sender
• SpamWeed is the only spam filter in the market, which can be programmed for more complex spam filtration rules. Only thing you need is to know programming
• The program has a very simple user interface, which is very easy to install and use

Thus if you are looking for a spam filter then SpamWeed is your best bet.

You can try the demo version before buying the full program.

SpamWeed – An Innovative Spam Filter is a post from: Security FAQs

Over time the internet has become huge and it continues to grow at an amazing rate.

Almost every person who uses the internet has their own email address, or perhaps even several.

Therefore I would be shocked if you are unfamiliar with the term’ spam’,  though you may be unaware of it’s actual effects and the measures you can take to prevent it.

On technical terms Spam is actually an Unsolicited Commercial Email (UCE) which refers to an email message sent to a person without his/her prior request.

Spam costs virtually nothing to send and the costs are paid by the recipient (time lost in dealing with it) and the carriers (bandwidth used) rather than by the sender.

This is the reason why advertisers use Spam to market their unauthorized products.

Below are the different types of Spam that you should be cautious of:

• Phishing spam – a popular and heinous type of scam
• Foreign bank spam
• Get rich easily and quickly spam
• Illicitly pirated software
• News group and forum spam

The Effects Of Spam

Individuals, or a group of users, are easily targeted by email spam.

Spam usually arises as a result of giving out your email address on an unauthorized or unscupulous website.

Here are some of the effects of Spam:

• Fills your Inbox with number of ridiculous emails.
• Degrades your Internet speed to a great extent.
• Steals useful information like your details on you Contact list.
• Alters your search results on any search engine.

Spam is a huge waste of everybody’s time and can quickly become very frustrating if you receive large amounts of it like I do.

Preventing Spam

There are some effective measures that you can employ to stop spam entering your inbox:

• Always use an updated and trustworthy antivirus program.
• Never share your email address and personal information like credit card details with an unreliable source.
• Avoid responding to any emails that you never asked for. If you receive such email then delete it immediately.
• Try to avoid emails with the subject “need assistance or some funds “, or any other catchy titles. And never, ever forward such emails since they could be targeted to obtain as many number of mails email addresses as possible.
• Whenever you need to forward an email to a group of people make use of the BCC field which enables you to hide the email addresses from each of the other recipients.
• Never mention your email address in newsletters or instant messenger chats.
• Switch off the reading pane in email clients such as Outlook. It can be done by View –>Reading Pane – Off.

Hopefully the above will minimise the amount of spam you receive.

If you still get too much junk mail then I would recommend getting a good email filter/blocker.

What Is Spam, What Are It’s Effects And How Do I Prevent It? is a post from: Security FAQs

Spam wastes your time, and when you’re using your mobile device, it wastes your money.

Of course I’m not talking about Hawaii’s favorite canned meat.

I’m talking about unsolicited commercial e-mail, junk e-mail in fact.

Once your e-mail finds its way onto a spammer’s list, your inbox is inundated with spam advertising from personal enhancement ads to car loan notices and everything in between.

Spam Filters

Many e-mail service providers provide some sort of anti-spam service that filters out spam messages with varying degrees of success.

If you have access to one of these services I suggest that you use it, but monitor it to make sure that it doesn’t mistake your legitimate e-mail for spam.

Spam filters usually move suspected spam to a junk folder where you can view it at your convenience, just to make sure that no real mail gets deleted by mistake.

Spam Prevention

The best way to reduce spam is to prevent your e-mail address from getting on a spammer’s e-mail list in the first place.

When one spammer has it, they will all get it sooner or later.

Also, once you’re on a list there’s no way to get off of all of them; you’re going to get spam forever.

There are a few ways that you can avoid getting on spam lists though -

• Don’t ever give out your real e-mail address when filling out online forms, especially when you’re entering contests or claiming “free” prizes.
• Don’t post your e-mail address to Web sites or discussion and news groups.
• Don’t post to discussion or news groups from your real e-mail account.

Consider setting up a throwaway or junk e-mail account that you can use as the address you give out when you sign up for stuff online.

This way once the address starts finding its way onto spammer lists, the spam doesn’t wind up in your real inbox.

Periodically, you can log in and check the spam account to delete piled up messages and make sure that no important mail is waiting there among the spam.

Also, if you use a free e-mail service you’ll have to log in periodically to keep the account active.

If you participate in Usenet or other discussion groups, don’t post from your real e-mail account.

Spammers use automated software that scans groups and compiles lists of e-mail addresses. Post from your throwaway account, and keep your inbox spam-free.

The automated software that spammers use also can detect and copy e-mail addresses from Web pages and the bodies of news postings.

If you post from your junk account but list your real e-mail address in the message body you’ll end up on the junk e-mail lists.

If you must post your real e-mail address, obfuscate it so that the spammers scanning software won’t recognize it as an address.

For example, if your e-mail address is you@yourisp.com, you could post it as “you at yourisp dot com” or “youNOSPAM@yourNOSPAMisp.com.”

Either one would be decipherable by a reasonably intelligent human being, but not by a spam-bot.

Reporting Spam

Besides filtering, another step that you should take is to report spam.

Rather than ducking and hiding we should start hitting back.

Many spammers use (abuse) someone else’s mail server, often without their knowledge.

If you take the time to report the spam, mail administrators can take action and stop spammers from abusing their servers.

Web sites that use spam to advertise may be in violation of their service agreements and reporting the spam can get them shut down.

The best reporting tool I have found is Spamcop.net.

Once you register, you can report spam through an online form or by forwarding spam to an e-mail address that they assign you.

You also can get a spamcop.net e-mail address, which spamcop.net monitors to filter out spam.

Fighting Back Against Spam is a post from: Security FAQs

Whenever one opens their email account, there is a sea of spam emails that not only annoy you but waste your time too.

As you need to search through them to look for the mails that really matter to you.

Thus, the need for an effective and trustful spam filter is inevitable.

Now you don’t need to spend time sorting your email manually and deleting the spam.

With the intelligent Spam Bully installed in your computer, you get freedom from the thousands of spam emails that plague your inbox daily.

Some unique features of Spam Bully

• Intelligent Bayesian Spam Filter is designed to learn from your personal email reading and opening habits so that it will identify and segregate the spam mails from the good mails.
• The Spam Bully allows you to allow or block users, email addresses, keywords and languages of emails to make in to your inbox.
• The Spam Bully is compatible with most email clients like Outlook, Outlook Express and the new Windows Vista Mail client.
• Spam Bully can identify fraudulent links in the phishing emails and analyze the links in the emails for spam content.
• The program has multi language interface, which makes it easy for people to read and organize in the different languages of their choice.
• Customization is the word of the day and Spam Bully is completely customizable for every feature.
• Spam Bully comes with a highly interactive and user friendly interface which makes it very easy to use.
• One of the most innovative features of Spam Bully is that a user can see the statistics of spam mails. They can track the change in the spam received as well as the sources of the spam.
• The spam mails can be safely analyzed and deleted as per your choice or the spam folder can be put on auto delete.

Thus, if you have been looking for a trustworthy and reliable spam filter then you ought to buy the Spam Bully program.

Spam Bully Review is a post from: Security FAQs