Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
It's sad to say that there are no longer any spam-free zones. If you have an Internet-based e-mail account, you
get spam. End of story. In fact, you most likely don't get only one or two spams a day, but more like one or two
dozen. Actually, one or two hundred (shudder) is no longer an unusually high amount. That's not surprising be-
cause spam now accounts for the majority of the billions of messages sent every day, and on some days it even
accounts for 90 percent of all sent messages.
Avoiding Spam
It is no longer possible to avoid spam, but there are some things you can do to minimize how much of it you have to wade
through each day:
• Never use your actual e-mail address in a forum or newsgroup account.
The most common method that spammers use to
gather addresses is to harvest them from online posts. One common tactic you can use is to alter your e-mail address by adding
text that invalidates the address but is still obvious for other people to figure out. Here's an example:
yourname@yourisp.remove-this-to-email-me.com.
• When you sign up for something online, use a fake address if possible.
If you need or want to receive e-mail from the
company and must use your real address, make sure you deactivate any options that ask if you want to receive promotional of-
fers. Alternatively, use an address from a free web-based account (such as a Yahoo! account) so that any spam you receive goes
there instead of to your main address.
• Never open suspected spam messages or display them in the preview pane.
Doing so can sometimes notify the spammer
that you've opened the message, which confirms that your address is legitimate.
• If you see a message in your Inbox that you're sure is spam, don't click it.
Clicking it displays the message in the preview
pane. Instead, right-click the message and then choose Delete.
• Never, I repeat,
never,
respond to spam.
Don't respond, even to an address within the spam that claims to be a removal ad-
dress. By responding to the spam, you prove that your address is legitimate, so you just end up getting more spam.
If you still get spam despite taking precautions, Mail's Junk Mail feature is your next line of defense. It's a
spam filter that examines each message you receive to look for telltale signs of spamminess (as antispam types
call it). If Mail determines that a message is spam, it displays the message's details in a light-brown text. When
you click the message, Mail displays the header, as shown previously in Figure 6.1.
This is all well and good, but it does mean that you end up with junk mail mixed in with your legitimate mes-
sages, which, given the explicit nature of so many spam subject lines these days, isn't a desirable state of af-
fairs. It would be much better if Mail just shuffled all suspected spam to the Junk mailbox. Here's how to con-
figure Mail to do just that:
1. If you have any spam in your Inbox that isn't marked as junk mail, right-click each message and
then choose Mark
→
As Junk Mail.
You can also click Mark Selected Messages as Junk (the thumbs
down icon) in the toolbar.
2. Choose Mail
→
Preferences.
The Mail preferences appear.
3. Click the Junk Mail tab.
4. In the When junk mail arrives section, select the Move it to the Junk mailbox option (see Figure
6.4).
Mail asks if you want to move all the messages currently marked as junk to the Junk mailbox.
5. Click Move.
