Description: what are the Do's and Don'ts of spam email?
Do check that you have anti-virus protection. The College uses Sophos Antivirus and it should be installed on all College owned computers and laptops. If you notice otherwise, let us know.
Do update your virus protection. Having virus protection that is not updated is only marginally better than not having it at all. Most of the College owned computers are updated automatically. If you believe that your computer is not being updated, please let us know.
Do clear the check mark that says, "Don't send me any email" when you sign up at websites. It is also good to have a spare email account or two just to use for signing up for things on the Internet. Gmail and Yahoo are among many sites that provide free email. These accounts can be considered throwaway accounts when they start getting too much Spam.
Don’t give out your e-mail address to unfamiliar or unknown recipients.
Don’t make lists of e-mail addresses, and if you do, do not e-mail the list. This is a general procedure, particularly among the moderately inexperienced.
- It occurs like this - You obtain an interesting article and you instantaneously want to mail it to all your contacts – You do this by including all the addresses in a single posting. The dilemma? All recipients get a copy of all the addresses. Then one of your contacts sends it to all their friends the same way. The address list becomes substantial, and lastly it falls into the hands of someone in the Spam industry.
- An alternative, mail a separate copy to each of your contacts. The suggestion is there should never be more than one addressee on an email.
Don’t open attachments from strangers or open attachments that you were not expecting, even from people you know.
Don’t follow the link to unsubscribe from future messages when you receive Spam. This is almost certainly a ploy to verify, to the spammer, that they have found an active email account.
Don’t respond to a Spam e-mail. For a spammer, one "hit" among thousands of mailings is enough to justify the practice. Instead, if you want a product that is advertised in Spam e-mail, go to a website that also carries the product, inquire there, and tell them you do not approve of Spam methods and will not patronize a company that uses spammers.
Don’t respond to the Spam e-mail's instructions to reply with the word "remove." This is just a trick to get you to react to the e-mail -- it alerts the sender that a human is at your address, which greatly increases its value. If you reply, your address is placed on more lists and you receive more Spam.
Don’t sign up with sites that promise to remove your name from Spam lists. These sites are of two kinds: (1) sincere, and (2) Spam address collectors. The first kind of site is ignored (or exploited) by the spammers, the second is owned by them -- in both cases your address is recorded and valued more highly because you have just identified it as read by a human.
Additional Information:
- Search or browse our online Knowledge Base
- Call the CCRI IT Help Desk at (401) 825-1112
