Unfortunately SPAM is a big part of our everyday lives online and it seems that nobody can completely cut off the never ending stream of junk email that is a mix of advertising and criminal scams.
With around 113 Billion Spam emails sent daily there’s actually more junk email than legitimate email so what do you do if your inbox is full of rubbish like this?
Well if your email account is from your Internet Service Provider then they should be your first port of call when seeking respite from SPAM. Ask about their spam filtering solution which can catch junk email before it gets downloaded to your computer – All service providers should have something like this in place that customers can opt in or out of.
Consider using a web-mail service like Gmail, Yahoo or Hotmail. All of these have very good spam filtering that you can easily control so less legitimate mail gets caught as SPAM. The best feature of a web-mail service is that non of the messages are actually downloaded to your computer and junk messages are cleared out automatically after a set period.
The key with avoiding SPAM to begin with is prevention. Don’t freely post your email address on websites or forums and consider using disposable email addresses such as offered by Yahoo when making contact with businesses or people for the first time if you’re uncertain about what they will do with your contact information.
Additionally if you receive an email that seems suspicious, for example, you don’t recognise the sender or the subject line looks dubious:
– Don’t reply or click on any links, including ‘unsubscribe’ – doing this may result in receiving even more spam or lead to malicious software being installed on your computer.
– Don’t buy products or services advertised in the message.
– Delete the message without opening it.
If you receive a message from a legitimate business, for example a financial institution or shop, but do not want to receive messages from that organisation, you can:
unsubscribe – legitimate businesses do not operate in the same way as professional spammers, so unsubscribing to their emails can be a quick, low-risk way to prevent future spam. Under Australia’s spam laws, businesses must honour your unsubscribe request within five working days.
You can also lodge a complaint or report spam (originating from Australia) to the ACMA (Australian communications and Media Authority) in a number of ways, which are detailed in the Reporting spam section on their website.
