Spam: The Biggest Enemy Of Email

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It is an irritating experience to find spam emails in our inbox on a regular basis. ‘You may already have won’ type emails are replacing the old-fashioned newsletters that were once posted through the letterbox. Spammers are quite clever and are finding new and innovative ways to get their spam email through the filters that would otherwise block it and are also smart enough to lead with a subject line that isn’t obviously spam and maybe even arouses your curiosity enough to open it.

The number of spam emails sent every single day is estimated at 260 billion! In fact, anywhere from 70-90% of all emails are said to be spam. Over 90% of spam contains a link while some 20-25% contain malware or malware links (some estimates have this figure far lower) that infects your computer with a virus. Unsurprisingly, the United States is the main source with an estimated 15% of all spam emails coming from America while South Korea is said to be in second place with 8%. Interestingly, over 60% of spam emails are said to be in the pharmaceutical category. This actually makes sense as ‘lose fat fast’ and ‘gain muscle’ type emails are among the most common.

What Is Spam?

There are different definitions of ‘spam’ but the easiest one to understand is that such emails are unsolicited. Spammers send emails to anyone they can find instead of targeting their audience like a professional company would. Rather than spend money on marketing and sending emails only to subscribers, spammers purchase email addresses and start sending email constantly to the unfortunate recipients. Spam has the ability to clog up your email account and having to delete them can be time consuming. More vindictive spammers send malware with their emails and if you open them, your computer immediately becomes infected with a virus.

Why Do We Get Spam?

As you can imagine, money is the main motivating factor. The other issue is the fact that email is incredibly easy and cheap to send. You can send tens of thousands of email for a few dollars a month and there are a host of email providers to choose from. Spam emails normally promise to change some aspect of your life and are worded carefully to emit a customer response. As we mentioned above, mean-spirited spammers will infect your computer, pretending that they have an anti-virus solution to fix your problem. All you need to do is give your credit card details!

Experienced spammers know how to get past spam filters and are constantly looking for ways to get past your filter and into your inbox. Once upon a time, the simple act of sending thousands of emails was enough as many anti-spam filters used statistical analysis and could be fooled into allowing a certain amount of messages to creep through by sheer weight of numbers alone. Thankfully, advanced spam filters do an incredible job of blocking junk email with the best providers keeping more than 99% of spam mail from your inbox. Just imagine if you had no filter!!!

How To Prevent Spam

The most obvious solution is to use common sense. Even with the best spam filter, some messages will occasionally creep through. The first thing to do is look at the name on the email. If you don’t recognise it, don’t open it! Most spam subject lines will make it obvious but if you happen to open the email, NEVER click on the link!

Best estimates suggest that 95% of all junk email received comes because an individual posted his/her email address on a public forum. Robots and scripts automatically scan the Internet for email addresses so don’t be so quick to provide the information online. Internet chat rooms are also goldmines for robots harvesting email addresses. If you use such rooms, ensure your username is not linked to your email.

Another clever way of dealing with spam is to have a secondary email address that is used when you are dealing with sites that you don’t have complete confidence in. Keep your primary address for work or talking to friends/family. You will be fully aware that your secondary email is likely to be filled with spam so you can be more careful when using it.

It goes without saying that clicking on spam mail links is a bad idea but it is even worse if you decide to follow the link and purchase what is being offered. You are providing unscrupulous companies with your financial details and also funding future spam endeavours. There are a number of authorities that deal with spam so if you receive such junk emails, contact organisations such as the US Federal Trade Commission for assistance.

It is fortunate that we have such effective spam filters because the crazy amount of spam emails sent every day is truly mind boggling and only serves to frustrate recipients. The next time you receive spam emails, just remember that there would be hundreds more received per day if you didn’t have the filter. Remember to use common sense and don’t open emails from sources you don’t trust. You could quite easily be infected with a computer virus which is inconvenient at best and dangerous at worst. Email is a wonderful invention and allows us to connect with people worldwide in seconds. Spam email is the price we have to pay for this innovation but if we are prudent in our email and Internet usage, it doesn’t have to be a major problem.

An article is written by Sara Carter.  I like social networks, Google android,  and psychology. I’m interested in IT services, computer upgrades, computer repair, different computer apps. Love travelling and skiing.