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Below you will find 12 steps that you can take today to reduce email spam.

The word “Spam” as applied to Email means “Unsolicited Bulk Email”. Unsolicited means that the Recipient has not granted verifiable permission for the message to be sent. Bulk means that the message is sent as part of a larger collection of messages, all having substantively identical content. –Spamhaus

1. Do not post your email address online in clear text.  If you must post it online be sure that your address is munged so that the bots will not see it.
2. Never respond to suspicious emails.
3. Do not unsubscribe to spam email.
4. Do not use your personal email address for public use. Instead, use a disposable email address and set it up to forward messages to your personal email account.  If you begin to receive spam in a disposable account –simply delete the disposable account and sign up for a new one.
5. Do not open suspicious attachments, links, or images. This could lead to malware downloading on your computer.
6. If you are using a software email program (and not a web-based one) be sure to disable the preview pane.
7. Use spam-blocking tools and filters.
8. If you need to forward email to groups of people use a disposable email address in the TO: field and add all recipients to the BCC: field.  This will shield the email address from others as well as from spam harvesters.
9. Be sure to have antivirus software installed on your computer, run a full scan every week, and keep it updated!  You should run some form of an anti-malware software each week too, such as Malwarebytes.
10. When you sign up for something on the web, be sure to uncheck the box that says “YES, I want to be contacted by select third parties concerning products I might be interested in.”
    
11. Be sure to take advantage of reputable and free computer scans such as the firewall leak and ShieldsUP tests over at Gibson Research Corporation.
12. Report spammers.  Register for free spam reporting service at SpamCop.

Check over at Software Candy for more tips here.

Some helpful Links:

Federal Trade Commision FTC

If you are a victim of a financial solicitation contact
the Internet Crime Complaint Center

Medical fraudulent claims (devices or products)
Email: webcomplaints@ora.fda.gov

Investment-related email- *Copy headers and forward to:
Email: enforcement@sec.gov

*How to copy email headers

Tags: email, internet crime, Malware, spam, spammers