Page 1 of Avoiding Spam

Sometime in the next couple of months I`m liable to change my broadband supplier so my email address will change.
At the moment I filter everything through mailwasher which picks up anything up to 50 spam a day, suffice to say after two weeks holiday the 1000 limit was full and the number I read was in single figures.

Just wondering if anyone has any sage advice on avoiding it in the first place when the email changes.

Snaps

don`t send out any emails.
Don`t use an address that may possibly be randomly generated by spam bots
don`t log into your mail server
and lastly don`t post on any newsgroups or forums

Best you can manage with spam is getting an isp that offers spam filtering and virus scanning on email and doesn`t insist on sending you all mail addressed to the domain irrespective of whats before the @. I prefer one that allows me to verify that its not blocking valid email as no filter can block 100% without taking out a few valid ones as well though some may prefer not to see any spam at the cost of not getting other email.

Get yourself a hotmail or gmail account to use on forums and forms. Only give your proper email address to your mates. Maybe also set up a different one for shopping online, so all the junk ads go to that too.

If you have to fill in an email address anywhere to access a download or something just try a fake one and make it up. As long as it`s gnihtemos[at]moc.erehwemos it will probably work, unless an email with the link is sent to it - then use your hotmail or whatever :D

You could also look at www.cashette.com or www.bluebottle.com. With these a verification message is sent back to each sender asking them to verify themselves (spammers usually will not). Only then will the email get delivered to your inbox. Both can be accessed via web, and can be downloaded to your Outlook/Thunderbird. Best of all, these are free!

Regards,
Critters.:D


www.homepclinks.com

you do that i send the boys around to explain the concept of baseball bat and head. there are enough stupid message bouncing systems forwarding spam onto forged senders in spam headers and effectively doubling the amount of spam going around

There is much good advice here about a strategy to avoid spam:

Set up a first line mail account with say hotmail.Do not use common terms or names such as blue,smith,two or brown.If entering competitions etc always use junk addressess.

Switch on spam filters.

Before downloading mail use a spam agent that lets you see your waiting server messages.These can in many cases be refused at the server and bounced back to the sender signalling a invalid address.

Turning to your machine make sure it is aways up to date to stop hackers,always have a firer wall,always remove spyware after every session.If you get a flood of junk e-mails check for spyware.Use an appropriate browser.