Preventing Spam: What Can You Do to Prevent Spam?
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 E-mail Client Software Filtering Tools
In addition to the spam filtering and identification provided by GUMail, the Georgetown-recommended e-mail clients, Thunderbird, Outlook 2003, and Mac Mail, provide built-in spam filtering tools. These filters can help catch messages that make it through the GUMail filters.
When you enable these features, you will "teach" the filter to recognize which messages are spam and which are legitimate. The spam filtering tools are adaptive and "learn" how to filter future messages based on your prior decisions.
The GUMail page offers assistance with setting up mail filters for other e-mail software clients. Other e-mail software clients may not have the same filtering features that are available with our recommended e-mail clients.
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.
Do Not Click on Links or Invitations from Strangers
Although this seems like common sense, many of our users are new to the web and will want to explore the many offerings available online. Use caution and prudence when clicking on links and especially pop-up windows. These can actually be used to install software or malware on your computer.
Do Not Download or Install Spyware
This too may seem like common sense, but it is not always easy to tell what is spyware. Spyware is often bundled along with another software program or a game. When you install the software or game, the spyware automatically loads onto your computer. File sharing programs like Kazaa and BearShare are the most notorious as including spyware. WeatherBug, Gator, and Bonzai Buddy also include spyware. Be cautious of programs that promise to speed up your computer or help you with shopping or web searches. Finally, do not download game 'cracks' or 'cheats' or 'codes', especially from Warez. For more info on spyware files, click here.
Protect Your Computer According to Our Recommended Guidelines
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.
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