Spam is a huge problem for anyone who uses email. In any single day America Online blocks over 2 billion spam messages, an average of 88 emails per subscriber, from hitting its customers' email accounts. According to research firms spam is expected to account for over two thirds of the 10.9 trillion messages sent around the world.
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Login to My AccountAvoid posting your email address on websites
Spammers create search engines that search the Web specifically looking for the email addresses. The programs, called spambots, harvest millions of email addresses from the net each day.
If you operate a business online create a another email address that is not used for personal messages. Once you have a business email address you can be more aggressive with your spam filtering on that address.
Do not enter online contests
If it sounds too good to be true then it probably is. Some sites are created specifically to attract email addresses. For example, a spammer will create a site that says, "Win $1 million!!! Just type your email address here!" In the past, lots of large sites also sold the email addresses of their members. Or the sites created "opt-in" email lists by asking, "Would you like to receive email newsletters from our partners?" If you answered yes, your address was then sold to a spammer.
Choose the right email address
The most common source of spam is when spammers used a "dictionary" search of email servers. A dictionary attack utilizes software that emails to millions of random email addresses. Many of these addresses have slight variations, such as "jdoe1abc@hotmail.com" and "jdoe2def@hotmail.com." The software then records which addresses are "live," and adds those addresses to the spammer's list.
