How To Avoid Spam

Make life a little more difficult for spammers, and try to avoid getting spam in the first place. Find a short collection of tips to avoid spam below.

Keep Your Mail Address Private!

The best way to avoid receiving spam (not surprisingly), is to keep your mail address private:

• Don't post your e-mail address on public places, such as websites, or forums. If you have to make your mail address available, disguise it. There are many tips in the internet on how you can scramble your address and how you can give spambots (programs that collect mail addresses) a hard time.
• Avoid giving your e-mail address when filling out forms on some website. If you have doubts about websites, use disposable mail accounts, mail accounts that are good only to receive one or two messages. There are several organizations providing this service, e.g. Spamgourmet.
• Use a mail filter to get rid of the SPAM messages you still receive.

Keep Your System Up-to-date!

Trojans and Spyware use security holes in your Internet Browser and Mail Client software to harvest passwords from your computer, mail addresses from your address book, or to install spam relays, not to mention viruses.

• Stay sharp! Install the latest security patches of your browser, your operating system, and your mail client.
• Use the latest version of your antivirus software.
• If you are using Outlook or Outlook Express, consider disabling HTML preview. The preview window is rendered with the same engine as Internet Explorer, and thus has the same security holes.

Many of today's viruses have been created with the sole purpose of creating a backdoor to your system, so your computer can be used to gather information or to relay spam messages.

Don't Let Yourself be Fooled!

When you receive mails with dubious attachments, don't open them! Make sure the supposed sender did really send that mail, before touching it. Faking an E-Mail "From" address simple as typing letters on your keyboard.

Don't be fooled by fake delivery failure notices. If you never sent that mail, it is a virus.

Closing Remarks

This document is far from complete, and will continue to evolve. Please submit hints and suggestions to , we are happy to make anything helpful available to other users.