Anti-spam - How to avoid spam

The term malware can be defined as 'any programs, documents or messages that can have detrimental effects on computers'. Viruses, therefore, are only a small part of an ever-expanding group, which covers all types of IT security threats, including spam, dialers and spyware, and whose effects can be just as damaging as any virus attack.

One of the biggest dangers on the Internet today is spam or unsolicited commercial mail, as it can cause damage at many different levels.

The term 'spam' is said to have originated from a Monty Python sketch. The sketch takes place in a restaurant where all the dishes on the menu include the canned luncheon meat SPAM. When the waitress reads out the menu a group of Vikings sing a chorus of "spam, spam, spam..." louder and louder, drowning out other conversation. The term probably started to be used to describe unsolicited commercial mail because it drowns out legitimate mail.

The financial damage caused by this type of malware can be calculated in terms of the number of working hours lost around the world every day by users having to delete these messages, without even reading them. Take a network with five hundred workstations as an example, if each workstation receives ten spam messages every day and ten minutes is spent deleting these messages, it is easy to calculate how many working hours are lost a year dealing with spam. What's more, if the subject is attractive enough to entice the user into reading it or connecting to an Internet address specified in the text, the number of working hours lost significantly increases.

However, spam also entails other dangers. For example, although it is not very common, it could carry viruses or other malicious code, or contain links to web pages that are designed to download software to the computer without the user realizing. This is probably the method that Sobig.F used to become 'the fastest-spreading virus in computer history'.

Avoid Email Harvestors

Here is a nice Java Script you can use to hide your email addresses listed on your web pages.

<script language="JavaScript"><!--var name = "name";

var domain = "yahoo.com";
document.write('<a href=\"mailto:' + name + '@' + domain + '\">');
document.write(name + '@' + domain + '</a>');
// --></script>

The script in action:

To use: change the information that we have italicized, underlined & is in bold print

NEVER use your "real" email address when posting to newsgroups, classified sites, FFA etc. That is where spammers get your email address. Use "throw away" email accounts. Such as:

Hotmail
Yahoo
Bigfoot
Angelfire