Spam Prevention Tips: What Can You Do to Prevent Spam?





	Spam Prevention Tips: What Can You Do to Prevent Spam? Also available: Anti-Virus and Malicious Software Prevention Tips What are spam, spoofing, and phishing? Spam is an umbrella term for unsolicited bulk email messages from individuals called spammers. Spammers are often soliciting products, attempting to commit fraud, or distributing viruses. Spoofing occurs when the sender of an email message pretends to be someone else, i.e. they falsely manipulate the "From" field in an email. This is usually done to make you release sensitive information. Phishing is a type of spam that is used to trick you into entering your personal or account information in order to breach your account and commit identity theft or fraud. What Can You Do to Prevent Spam? Eliminating spam is a partnership between you and Georgetown's University Information Services. There are several things you can do to prevent spam. If you set up client-side e-mail filtering tools, give away your GUMail address less often, mask or remove your GUMail address from web pages, protect your computer according to our recommended guidelines, and report spam to the proper authority, then you will receive less spam. Use filters to more aggressively filter spam Use your GUMail address less often Remove or mask your GUMail address on web pages Report spam to the proper authority Lock your screen or logout More Aggressively Filter Spam You can set up your e-mail client to more aggresively filter spam by setting up extra filters to work with GUMail's spam filter and labeling service. You can also use the built-in spam filters in the Georgetown-recommended e-mail clients, Thunderbird, Outlook 2003, and Mac Mail. Thunderbird Spam Filtering Instructions Outlook 2003 Spam Filtering Instructions Mac Mail Spam Filtering Instructions Use Your GUMail Address Less Often The more public lists that include your e-mail address, the higher the probability that you will receive spam. To reduce the potential for spam, we recommend that you use your GUMail account for business purposes only. Use an alternative e-mail account when making online purchases, joining mailing lists, responding to blogs or newsgroups, subscribing to web based memberships, or submitting your contact information online. Free e-mail accounts are available from MSN Hotmail, Yahoo!, Google, or many other providers. You may also have a personal e-mail account that you can use for these purposes. Giving out your GUMail address indiscriminately will increase the amount of spam that you and everyone else with a Georgetown University e-mail address receives. Remove or Mask Your GUMail Address on Web Pages Unfortunately, e-mail links on web pages are prime targets for spammers. Web based e-mail addresses are harvested by spambots or bots, which are robot software programs that scour the web to collect all of the unprotected e-mail addresses. Instructions for masking your GUMail address on web pages are available here. Report Spam to the Proper Authority If you would like to take action to reduce spam, please forward it to the proper authority. Remember to forward the e-mail with full message headers. If the message is NOT from a Georgetown University e-mail address, forward it to the Federal Trade Commission at spam@ftc.gov. If the message appears to come from a Georgetown University e-mail address, forward it to spam@georgetown.edu. Lock Your Screen or Logout Lock your screen or logout when you are away from your computer, even for a moment. You never know who may be looking for your personal information. Shutdown your computer when it is not in use. This will help avoid viruses and spam, as you cannot be targeted when your computer is off.