8 How to protect yourself against spam
People and organisations can only send spam if they have a collection of email addresses to send to. They ‘harvest’ these addresses:
- from legitimate company databases;
- from web pages;
- from chat rooms;
- by guesswork;
- from people who use an unsubscribe option.
To minimise the spam you receive:
- Check whether you can set rules on your email software to filter unwanted messages as they arrive.
- Check whether your ISP provides a mail filter. If not, change to one that does.
- Don't reveal your email address unless you want to receive mail from that source.
- Don't publish your email address on a web page.
- Don't use your personal email address when registering on websites, joining chat rooms or using newsgroups. Either create a new address (most ISPs give you more than one address) for these purposes or create a false one (e.g. junkfilter@myaddress.isp.uk).
- Don't use the unsubscribe option in response to unrequested mail.
- Educate the other users of your computer.