You’ll be hard-pushed to find someone who actually wants to receive internet spam. It’s one of the most frustrating parts of the digital age, along with hacking. We understand this at MailCleaner – it’s why we set our business up in the first place. We want to help you avoid all this unnecessary junk. Our lives are busy enough without them being plagued with e-mail spam.
There are some best practices that you can introduce to your life to help protect yourself from being bombarded by spam, and to limit how affected you are by it. This includes:
Protecting your identity
No matter what you do, it is important to try and keep your identity protected where possible. This may feel difficult given how many places it can be found online, from social media to address websites. However, reputable sites won’t ask you for personal information or log-in details. If you ever need to put a password into a site, it should be clearly encrypted.
If you get any e-mails asking for details about your identity, these should be ignored – especially if there is a link provided. Banks, insurance companies, healthcare providers, and so forth, all have your information already. If they are asking for something and you’re not sure, ring them directly using a number on their website.
Filter out spam
When you get an e-mail that is clearly junk, make sure you select it as ‘spam’ or ‘junk’ before opening it. Not only does this mean you don’t have it clogging up your inbox, but it also means your computer will be able to start remembering which e-mails are unwarranted so they can automatically be ignored. Your e-mails will try, where possible, to filter out spam. Sometimes this may mean authentic e-mails get lost in this part of your account, and it’s always worth checking every so often.
Avoid giving out your e-mail address
Spam will often come from your e-mail account being sold on to spam websites. Where possible, try to avoid giving out your details. This includes signing yourself up for lots of mailing lists. Even seemingly reputable companies are at risk of selling on your details. Keep an eye on what you’re opting in for as well, and opt out from any third-party e-mails. There will always be terms and conditions on reputable websites for you to read, so that you can find out what you’re signing up for.
Consider your password
The more complicated your password is, the harder it will be to crack. You need to ensure it is strong as this is a clear barrier against hackers. Depending on the website or service, you may need to include different types of characters, capital letters, and numbers. A strong combination is to join them all together into a password that doesn’t make logical sense, and can’t be easily guessed or connected to you. You can find random password generators online.
Watch your clicks
It’s always important to keep an eye on what you’re clicking, even if it may seem reputable. You might get an e-mail from a service such as Paypal saying you need to log-in as someone has tried to hack your account. Or you might get an e-mail from Amazon about an order you didn’t place, which is encouraging you to check your account. Although they may seem very legitimate, on closer investigation you might find the e-mail address is far from normal.
It can be very easy to get fooled into clicking on these e-mails when in a rush, or concerned about their contents. This is what spammers prey on. The same goes for e-mails from a friend’s e-mail account that has been hacked. Often this will be in the form of attachments that they’re asking you to look at. Spammers are getting increasingly clever, so be mindful and on guard.
Anti-spam filter software
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