To stop receiving spam, it helps to know what kind of spam you are getting. Each type of spam requires a different method of prevention. Below are the types of spam (I am aware of) and free methods to preventing them.
Harvested address spam: What is it: This is probably the most common type of spam. The spammers use a computer system (spider or spam-bot’) to check almost every website on the internet (including yours). The ’spam bot’ looks at the code of every web page, it looks for the ’@’ symbol. When it finds an ’@’ it knows its found an email address. It then collects the bit either side of the ’@’ symbol to capture your email address and add it to the spammers database of millions of harvested addresses. From then on that address will receive lots of spam!
How to find out if your email address is published on a website: Go to Google.com and type your email address into the search box. Google can usually show if your email address is on any website. If Google can find your address you can be sure the spammers have got it. Tip: Sometimes the website-page with your email address may be very long, from Google click the link that says ’Cached’ and you will see the page and your email address will be highlighted.
The solution: If the spammers have harvested your email address from a website they are not going to let it go. Get a new email address and make sure your new email address is not published online. If you must publish your email address on a website get your website designer/manager to encrypt your email address so the ’spam bots’ can’t harvest it as they robotic and relentlessly crawl the web .
Virus Spam: What is it? This is perhaps the 2nd most common type of spam.
Somone else’s computer (not yours) gets infected with a virus.The address book on their computer has your email address.The virus sends a spam to every address on the address book.The virus ’spoofs’ the ’from address’ in the email it sends i.e. the spam does not appear to have come from the senders email address, instead it says it came from another address taken from the address book.There is no point replying to the spam e.g. to say ’don’t spam me’ or ’your computer has a virus’ - as the ’from address’ is wrong, which means it will go to someone who didn’t send the spam. (note this is why you might receive emails from people saying you sent a virus to them, when you know your computer is clean). How to prevent it:
You can not prevent virus spam from being sent to you. The person with the infected computer needs to use quality anti virus software to clean their computer (see preventing computer viruses). You need a good spam filter to delete this kind of spam as it arrives