Guide to reducing spam unwanted email

We provide this free financial resource to visitors of the Community Room of SeniorSSuperStoreS with the intent to keep baby boomers, seniors and the elderly informed of matters that can affect their financial lifestyle. This resource information for seniors can also help you improve your health by reducing your spam stress level as you deal with unwanted email.

Contents:
1. Six Tips to Avoid Being Found By Spammers
2. Four Ways to Reduce Spam for Your Existing Account(s)
3. Five Steps to Take If You're Already Inundated with Spam

6 Tips to Avoid Being Found By Spammers

#1. Don't give permission for "partners" to use your name

When you register at many Web sites, they'll include a little checkbox (often pre-checked) with an explanation that says something like, "Send me offers from partners."

That "partners" word generally means anyone the company sells the use of your email address to. If you don't want to receive email from anyone but the specific site you're registering at, then make sure that box is unchecked!

In some cases, that box is hidden or jumbled in with so many other options that you really have to hunt to uncheck it. (Free email systems such as Hotmail and Yahoo are infamous for this.)

In other cases, the box has two offers -- it says something like "send me news from this site and from its trusted partners." This is frustrating because you may want to stay on the site's list, but not get on partner lists. In this case, we suggest you NOT check the box. Instead, contact the company's customer service department to see if you can get on just the list you want without also being on the other one.

#2. Stop entering unknown companies' sweepstakes

Unfortunately there are some sweeps offers online and via email that are run by unscrupulous companies with the sole purpose of getting your email address so they can sell it to others.

Therefore unless you know and trust the company running the sweepstakes, don't enter it.

Also, don't make the mistake of assuming that the company behind the prize has anything to do with the sweepstakes. A spammer may offer a name-brand prize to lull your suspicions. Only enter sweeps you know are run by trusted brands.

#3. Reject chain letters

Diplomatically ask any friends who send you chain mail, not to include you on these lists. This includes:

- jokes that have been around the Web a zillion times
- pleading to help a child in need, if you don�t personally know the child in question
- typical "get good luck" or "find love" chain letters
- pitches noting that a site will donate to charity such as breast cancer cures if you click there.

You see, when a friend sends a message to 20 people, then all 20 people (usually) see the email addresses of the other 19. If one or more of the other 19 does forward it (with your email address on it), then your email address is being passed along as long as anyone "cares" enough to forward the message yet again.

If you do want to forward something to friends and/or colleagues that's not chain mail, then be sure to put everyone's names in "bcc" (blind copy) so the rest of the list can't see them.

#4. Don't "sign" any petitions by email.

If you want to let politicians know how you feel, use their site's message form, snail mail them a letter, or go to http://www.thepetitionsite.com. If, instead, you forward a petition to friends asking them to forward it, then your email address is in far too many people's inboxes.

#5. Use an alternate email address for group posts

Spammers often troll email discussion group archives, online message boards and other e-communities to "harvest" the email addresses of people who've posted to them.

So, don't use your main email address. Instead set up a separate account for these discussions. This way even if a spammer gets your email, they can't fill your main mailbox with junk.

#6. Don't give your email to every company that asks for it.

Seems like every company asks for your email address these days -- from Web sites to printed order forms for magazine subscriptions.

Think twice before you hand it over to just anybody. We suggest you:

* Give your personal, favorite email address to only friends and companies you like to hear from quite a bit.
* Set up an alternate email address to use for lists you think you'd like to be on, but you're not quite sure.
* Set up another alternate email address to use if your email is going to be posted anywhere on the Web - especially on a site. These names are frequently harvested.

Also, be aware that no company or site should require your email address without a good reason -- for example a travel site that needs to send your tickets electronically, or a newsletter that's published via email.

If they don't give you a good reason for asking for your email, and there's no privacy policy that states explicitly that your name will not be shared with anyone else, then don�t hand over your email address.
It's that simple.

4 Ways to Reduce Spam for Your Existing Account(s)

#1. Find out whether your existing ISP or email provider has spam filtering as an option.

Hotmail and Yahoo both offer you the option to filter. Yahoo's is just on or off, but even when it's on, all filtered junk mail goes into a bulk mail folder, so you can easily review it to see whether anything that is not junk is getting filtered.

Hotmail's has three levels of filtering. If you turn on the strictest level, make sure you "whitelist" all your friends and any companies from which you want to hear. Otherwise they may be filtered out by mistake.

AOL has filtered spam for years. Earthlink just announced that they would be filtering spam.

In both these cases, the filtered mail is not accessible to you at all (to see whether it might be something you wanted to get); it just never shows up in your inbox. Unfortunately this means sometimes email you definitely want won't reach you. (The most famous case was AOL filtering out emailed acceptance letters from Harvard.)

#2. Turn on the built-in junk mail and pornography filters built into your desktop email software.

If you use Microsoft Outlook (98, 2000, or 2002), you can turn it on by going into the Organizer of your Inbox, then clicking the Junk Mail link on the left and turning on filtering for junk mail and pornography separately.

Most other desktop software permits you to add senders to a "blacklist" or "blocked senders" list, which will keep someone from spamming you from the same address twice. Check the email help file to learn how to turn it on.

#3. If you use desktop virus protection, consider buying the spam-filtering add-on product. Most virus-protection software providers offer a spam-filtering product.

#4. If none of the above apply to you, consider a spam filtering system such as:

SpamBuster (http://www.contactplus.com/products/spam/index.htm)
MailWasher (http://www.mailwasher.net)
SpamEater (http://www.hms.com/spameater.asp)

Some of these are free (but expect that to change as the demand grows.) All work by scanning the headers of your email messages and either deleting the offending messages or sending them to a folder of your choice. Again, double-check this folder on a routine basis to make sure it's not stopping messages you do want from getting through.

5 Steps to Take If You're Already Inundated with Spam

#1. Open a new email account, giving your new address only to your trusted inner circle, which would include merchants you shop with frequently and online publications to which you subscribe. Follow all the suggestions in part 1 above to keep your address off spammers' lists.

#2. Read the privacy policies of the sites to make sure they don�t plan to share this address.

#3. When you contact your friends and associates to tell them about your new email address, ask them to treat your email address as an "unlisted number" and not include it in the "TO" or "CC" field of any message that they're sending to a list of people. You should request "BCC" only.

#4. Don't start your new email account on one of the major email services. Yahoo, Hotmail and AOL accounts begin receiving spam almost from the moment a new account is opened.

#5. Pick an arbitrary combination of letters and numbers for your email address such as j2ohn, so that anyone sending spam to everyone at that email service by trying to guess email addresses (john@, john1@, john2@, etc.) will never guess yours.

Good Luck!