Ever wonder how those SPAMsters got your email? Here are a few tips for you to avoid getting your email to the wrong hands.
Avoid posting your email on the internet. Often times we would go on forum and message board websites and post our email in a message. Well, your email has become public information and most likely you will start to get SPAMs in your inbox. If you absolutely need to post your email address on the internet, make sure that you break up your address. For example, if you email address is someone@yahoo.com, you may want to post your email address as “someone [at] yahoo.com, and please replace [at] with @” Those malicious SPAMMERs are good at harvesting emails from public websites.
Avoid submitting your email to a website. This goes especially with those websites that are trying to get your email by offering something free in return. Make sure that the website has a privacy policy or a clear statement that they will not use your email address for any other purpose than what is stated on the website. It is also a good idea not to use your personal or main email address when you submit information on the internet. I always have a “junk” or “play” email address that I use when submitting my email address to websites that are offering me something in return.
What can you do if your email is on SPAMMER’s list? There is not much you can do except to live with the junk messages. You may reduce the headaches by using a desktop email application such as Microsoft Outlook and apply filters to your messages. If you have a free email from Yahoo or Hotmail they have a pretty good SPAM filter that can redirect junk emails to another box other than the INBOX.
You may also try to get another email address, but it is a pain in the butt as you will need to notify everyone about your new email address change. I would rather have you follow some simply DOs and DONTs as described above when surfing the internet.