Everybody Hates Spam

There's nothing like checking email only to find that your inbox is inundated with unsolicited messages from people you do not know. No you are not interested in buying dog food, beauty products, slimming pills, plants, or software! But still, you get these e-mail irritants.

Spam, this little Four Letter Word has annoyed millions of people around the world.

What is spam anyway? Spam also called unsolicited commercial email (UCE), unsolicited bulk email (UBE) or junk mail, unsolicited e-mail is sent to more people than usual in advertising.

Spam has adverse effects apart from annoying people. Apparently, it's a waste of time to sort through tons of emails while trying to figure out which e-mail address is valid and which is spam. Often you missed those posts just because they were thought to be spam. Spam has the potential to spread viruses, pornography and fraud.

It 'not just individuals who are affected by spam. Corporations and other businesses are suffering as well.

Many companies have already filed lawsuits against spammers who send spam, and say they are from such companies, when in fact they are not and were just sent to cause trouble and ruin the reputation of companies.

The NCSA and Bank of America has published a study called "Online Fraud Report," and showed that 87 percent of its respondents believed that they could distinguish the true from email and email fraud. It was found that 60 percent failed to identify legitimate email. It just shows that the spam problem has become worse. Most people could not even recognize the legitimate emails from spam.

Receiving spam is really a nuisance for people and businesses.

One might wonder how these spammers found your e-mail. With the existing technology available today, you should not be surprised to find that spammers use lots of techniques for them to get e-mail addresses of other persons. They could get the e-mail from DNS lists, or Usenet messages, web pages, you might also guess the common names of popular domains, or use programs called web spiders to find email addresses on the web.

So, how do you get rid of spam? Unfortunately, there is a 100 percent solution to this problem. You can try free anti spam or anti-spam filters, but this will only reduce the number of spam you receive, but not eliminate them entirely.

Another thing you can do is to click that unsubscribe link, usually located at the bottom of the spam message.

Like I said before, some spammers acquire email addresses by guessing common names in widespread areas, it would be wise to set up an email account that is difficult to guess. Use a different email when signing up with forums, mailing lists, chat, newsgroups, and registering with the site.

Aside from spam, a new variety of spam has recently emerged. Spammers have found new ways on how you could get those people to spam. The new target of spammers are news groups, groups, forums, instant messaging, online gaming community, blogs and books, even the guests.

With the gradual increase in spam, it's really important that you understand their nature and protect themselves by learning more about how you can get rid of it. Spam can waste your time, energy and money it would be really wise who knows how to block those annoying messages.

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