| Teton Wireless Support Center
- Spam Prevention Tips
Spam: the unsolicited e-mail you receive more often than
not. It’s usually commercial advertising - frequently for dubious
products, get-rich-quick schemes, or illegal services. Below
are some tips on how to prevent spam from entering your inbox and give you
some ideas for gaining control over your e-mail.
What is spam?
The first step in combating the onslaught of spam is to know it when you
see it. If you're lucky, you can identify spam based on its subject line.
If it’s offering you a lower mortgage, a date with Trixie, or free $$$,
you know it’s spam. But be careful, because spammers often use guile to
make the subject line something you might click on, such as "FWD: great
punch line." So, even if the subject looks harmless, your best bet is to
just delete it if you don’t recognize the address.
Many spammers also fake the name of the sender with something common such
as "Bob." Is this an e-mail from Uncle Bob? Or maybe it’s from your
co-worker? You don't know, and the spammer counts on your curiosity.
Also be sure to check the date it was sent. Most inboxes are sorted by
time, so spammers may send messages to the top of the list by changing the
date to several days earlier or later.
Worse yet, some spammers will fake an e-mail as being from someone you
trust, such as a national bank or a well-known online retailer. It’s all
pretty sneaky.
What do you do with spam?
Once you’ve identified a message as spam, don’t just delete it. Here’s
what to do (and what not to do) when you have unwanted e-mail on your
hands.
-
First, be sure your Teton
Wireless/XO Spam filters are ON. Once activated, the filters will
funnel unwanted messages into a "Junk Mail" or "Deleted" folder.
More information on setting up XO
Spam Filters.
-
Never, ever open an
attachment from a suspicious e-mail. It may contain a virus that could
wipe out everything on your PC. To compound the damage, it could
duplicate the virus and send it to everyone in your e-mail address book,
potentially destroying their machines as well.
-
Don’t forward unknown email.
Sometimes spam will have a fake "To" or "From" field. Since it appears
that the e-mail was erroneously sent to you, the spammer hopes you’ll
read it and helpfully forward it along. Don't.
-
Resist the temptation to
unsubscribe. Sometimes clicking a link that promises to unsubscribe you
or otherwise take you off a list lets the spammer know that your e-mail
address is valid, which means you might be spammed even more.
How can I stop it?
The best way to fight spam is to keep it from arriving in your inbox in
the first place. Here are some tips for preventing unwanted e-mail.
- Don't post your e-mail address online. Spammer
software scans newsgroups, web sites, and web forums looking for e-mail
addresses. If you post in such places, disguise your e-mail address. For
instance, instead of jane-doe@something.com, you could type jane-doe(at
sign)something(dot)com. But spammers are getting wise to these tactics,
too.
- Don’t give out your e-mail address unless you know
how it will be used. Read a site’s privacy policy to learn about the
company. If they don’t have a privacy statement, you probably shouldn’t
trust them with your address.
- Use a throw-away email address from a free email
service (Hotmail, Yahoo!) when registering for online services like news
and surveys. When the Junk Mail gets to an intolerable level, change the
address.
- Never buy anything advertised in spam. Even if you
happen to be looking for a lower mortgage rate, don’t look for it in
junk e-mail. Chances are the services advertised are bogus anyway.
Respected loan companies don’t randomly flood inboxes.
- Update your address book. Make sure that the people
you want to have contact with are in your address book: your friends,
family, business associates, and companies you’ve requested e-mail from.
Most e-mail systems have a filter, so messages may not be delivered into
a recipient's inbox unless the sender's e-mail address is included in
their address book. Find out how to keep real mail from getting filtered
from your inbox.
- Activate image blocking through the settings on your
e-mail account to avoid seeing potentially offensive pictures in your
e-mail. For example, if you are using Yahoo! mail, choose Mail Options,
and then select Image Blocking in the Spam Protection area.
- Some images and graphics in e-mail actually alert the
sender that you've opened the message, which verifies that your e-mail
address is active. If you block these images from being downloaded, the
sender won't receive this verification, and spammers will be less likely
to buy your address in the future.
- Use special software. In addition to the built in
SPAM filters, you can upgrade to XO Premium Spam Filters, or you may
want to use a product such as SpamSubtract from InterMute, which allows
you to filter and block e-mail according to pre-set categories,
keywords, domain names, and more, so you won’t miss out on any e-mails
that are important to you.
- Report spam to Teton Wireless
(abuse@tetonwireless.com)
to help us track key offenders.
Here are some Web sites that contain information about
spam. You can also make use of the various search engines online to look
for information about Junk Mail. Reference to these sites is for
informational purposes only, and does not constitute an express or implied
endorsement, affiliation or association with any such site.
|
