How to Spot Spam Emails
This article is posted under Technology
People today are lucky to enjoy the luxury of the age of information technology. No longer do they have to wait for days or hours at least to receive important letters or documents. With one click of the mouse or the keyboard, they can receive instructions from work, updates from friends, or just plain greetings from friends from all over the world. However, with this comfort comes the nuisance of unnecessary emails from complete strangers or even robots advertising this and that. Not only do they fill your inbox with junk, but some of them even carry viruses which are of course dangerous to your computer and to your network. It is therefore important that you know right away which is yours and which one belongs to the trash.
Step 1: Know your contacts.
This is of course, easy and the most obvious way to recognize a legitimate email from a spam. While you would always at least hesitate to answer a call from someone whose number is not on your cellular phone’s list, you shouldn’t entertain emails from individuals you don’t even know. Only those people whom you know are more likely to email you. Even if some spam emails are sent by “people” with legitimate-sounding names, if you do not know them, they are most likely spams.
Remember: If you cannot recognize the name of the sender, try to think if you know such person first, because there may be a chance that though you may not intimately know the sender, you may have known him somewhere such as during your business deals.
Step 2: Consider the subject.
One very obvious thing to consider in recognizing a spam email is the subject or title. There are various kinds of spam emails that are readily recognizable through their subjects. First of all, how can you win in a lottery when you didn’t even join one? Business opportunities that promise easy income may be very suspicious, especially in times of economic crisis. And of course, try to stay away from medications that promise to enlarge this and that if you love your life. Furthermore, while some of your contacts may forget to enter a subject when they send an email, many virus-carrying spam emails do not have a subject. It’s best to be very cautious regarding such emails.
Remember: Some of the virus-carrying spam emails may have a subject, most of which look harmless. However, some may be recognizable as they use pornography as the heading.
Spam emails are a nuisance and are dangerous to the safety of your email account. It is important to recognize a spam email immediately and trash it. With your vigilance, you may be able to save your account, your computer, or even yourself from phishing.
Photo Credit : LoopZilla
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it’s so easy.
if you can’t recognize the sender, then that’s a factor that you can doubt on whether or not an email is a spam or not.
if the subject is just trying to catch your attention and contain something else in its body, then you can also doubt on its being a spam.
and lastly, if it keeps on coming in to your inbox, then most probably it’s a spam.
if i may relate this to what’s happening in our subdivision, there are these people who go around the place and sticks some stuff in our mailbox, stuff like promoting their religion, advertisements about certain services, etc.
now that is spam! hehehe
Spam emails can easily be distinguished, especially nowadays since most email providers have a built-in spam filter function which filters spam emails from important ones. But still, some spam emails still find their way towards your inbox and can prove to be a nuisance, still with good judgement and common sense, you can easily distinguish legit ones from spam emails. First of all, most spam emails say that they are offer ridiculous amounts of money to you in exchange for your personal information, saying that you are a beneficiary from a very wealthy yet dead man.Never give in to such tempting offers, no matter how convincing the content is, because most of the time, they’re just after your credit card info in which they will use for various transactions.
It is advisable to always update your anti-virus software just in case you happen to open a spam email or click a link and get redirected to a suspicious website. You can also update the setting of your email to filter all unknown contacts to your spam folder rather than your inbox. That way, your inbox will be safe and just before you delete your spam folder, you can browse through the sender and the title of the email to make sure you are not erasing important emails. Be vigilant in opening strange emails. You can google it first to make sure it won’t harm your files or your computer if you open it up.
Its very easy to spot spam mails, it just needs logic and good judgment. If its a weird mail that you have no idea where it came from; or if it gives you prizes or offers that you didn’t really apply for, then those are definitely spam mails. Don’t just immediately click a new mail when it comes on your inbox. Look closely at the sender and subject. Usually you can already know if its spam by just looking at them. Email addresses that usually has the words “alert” or “offer” are spam mails. Be wise with opening links for they might just send viruses that will infect your PC. Popular free email providers usually already have the ability to filter spams and put them in a “spam folder” and you can easily delete them.
Spammers nowadays are becoming more and more intelligent in spamming people. Just a few minutes ago, I received an email from a known contact. Since I know the person, I opened up the mail. But it contained an unknown website. It didn’t have anything else in it. No Hi, no nothing, just the website. I warned my friend telling him that his account has been hacked and the hacker is using his account to spam people. This is not the first time that it has ever happened to me. Good thing I never clicked any of the websites.
Another way to find out if it’s a spam mail or not is when you see the “To:” portion blank. Well, if you have come this far, it means you were not able to decipher that it was supposed to be sent to a spam or trash folder. Just remember not to click any website included in the mail unless you are really sure that it is safe. If you know the sender, confirm first if it is safe or not. But if you don’t know the sender, then immediately flag it as spam mail.
I tried installing a non-genuine Antivirus in my PC, SPAM mails swarmed it and bugged down the system. I had it check by a technician and he advised me to buy a genuine Antivirus installer so that I can update it EVERYDAY. It’s amazing how technology and electronics has evolved. SPAM and web virus evolves everyday that’s why it is better to update the antivirus in your system daily to avoid being infected. The computer is somewhat a bog part in our everyday lives today, so I’m thankful that an article like this can be found in the web in order to give information to people on how to prevent SPAM.
thanks!!!