How to Avoid Spam

It feels awful to find over a dozen spam emails in your official email account every morning, no? That’s a horrible way to kickstart a day at work.

No one likes to scan through dozens of spam emails (which by the way may even carry malicious programs and distractions) everyday to find one email message that’s really meant to be delivered to you.

We’ve been there and dealt with it. Here’re a few guidelines that the person in-charge of your IT help desk should know:

• Ask all employees to stop distributing their official email IDs everywhere on the Internet. Be it their personal blog, twitter handle or forums they so passionately participate in. Ask them to keep their email addresses to themselves.
• Never register on websites that appear to have very poor designs or promise unbelievable offers. Many such websites exist merely to collect email IDs and other such information.
• Do not join online mailing lists unless it’s a reputed brand. At times, spammers try gathering email IDs (in thousands) by persuading people to register for a mailing list in return for a “fake” reward.
• If you receive one spam email, there’s no use trying to get rid of the spammer by clicking on the “unsubscribe” option. The link will in most cases do the opposite. The worst that can happen (and does happen) is that you will find your email ID passed on to some one else.