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What is spam? Well you know all those unwanted, annoying messages that are sent to your email, that is spam or electronic junk mail. Everyone who has ever had an email account will most likely have had spam. These emails are usually sent by the dozen and often look like adverts.
They will try to induce you to buy something therefore you have to divulge your credit/debit card details or they ask for your National Insurance number or your bank details and PIN number etc. Some of these emails look very official and are used for criminal purposes. More than half the emails that are sent are spam!
Not only are these a pain, as you have to spend ages deleting them, but they can end up costing a fortune and can mess up your computer as some do carry viruses.
It is impossible to totally eradicate spam but here are a few things that you can do to reduce the problem.
- Be careful who you are giving your email address, telephone number etc, to. Just because someone asks for your email address doesn’t mean that they need it or that you have to give it to them. The question you should be asking yourself is, “do I want this person or company to contact me in this way?” When you are completing forms on line just leave the email section blank.
- When subscribing to mailing lists, you should ensure the company has posted a public privacy statement on their website.
- Immediately delete any emails from addresses that you do not recognise, or that have suspicious subjects.
- If an email requests personal private information such as bank or credit card details, then ring the company concerned to see if the request is real. It is very unusual that you will be asked for this kind of information.
- You should be extremely careful when opening attachments; these can contain viruses that can delete information etc on your computer as soon as they are opened.
- You should install and run an anti-virus programme and a firewall to protect your computer. It is vital that these are kept up to date.
- Install a spam filter. Check to see if your ISP provides this service. You may have to pay extra for this.
- It is prudent to have two email addresses, firstly, a personal email and secondly a safe email. The first you would use for people you know, family and friends etc. The second, the safe email, you use when ordering things on line, signing up for newsletters or creating a profile on websites. (For example I have a hotmail account as my safe email so any spam would go there. Hotmail have a great spam filter built in, so it’s easy to spot spam straight away. Doing things this way leaves my personal email relatively spam free.
- Should you be writing to a company for information about their products, you should use your safe email. The company, when they receive your enquiry will put you on their mailing list and you will receive mail from them. If you use your safe email your personal account will remain spam free.
- Should you be sending an email to lots of recipients you should use the blind copy (Bc) field. This means that the email addresses you are sending it to are not seen by the other people.
- You should not buy from a spam email, and you should never reply to a spam email. Firstly, it will encourage them to continue sending you more and more spam, and secondly it confirms to them that your email is correct and accurate. They can then sell your email address to someone else, who in turn will send you more and more spam. (You can see why there is so much around!)
- Whatever you do, do not reply to spam to be unsubscribed. This again will let the spammer know that your email is accurate and valid. They will keep you on their list and you will receive even more emails.
- You should never put your personal email on your website, you should use a form so that your email address is hidden. However this method alone is not the safest way, as it is possible to still steal your email from the HTML code.
The unfortunate thing about spam is once you start receiving it you really can’t stop it. The only solution to stop spam once you are receiving it is to change your email address. This may seem a bit over the top, but if you are receiving hundreds of spam emails each day, then it is worth the effort.
Did you know that businesses can only send you direct marketing emails if you are an existing customer or you have given your consent? These companies cannot withhold their identity.
If you do have a customer relationship with a company and they are emailing you, you can opt out. There are rules and regulations covering this: Privacy and Electronic Communications Regulations (PECR). Also if you receive spam that you think is misleading or deceptive, then you can complain to your local trading standards office or the office of fair trading.
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