When we talk about spam, the first thing that should come in our minds are What is spam?
Spam is an unwanted rather a message not asked to be sent over the internet. It's sent to large crowd of users for the very purpose of Advertising, Phishing, Spreading Malware etc. Spam is often considered as a major security risk.
Why is spam sent?
Spam is sent to trick the users and get into their personal zone. This is often done by Advertising a product, Phishing, Spreading Malwares etc.
How to control Spam? (By Enduser)
Last year 80% of worlds email-traffic consisted of spam messages. With the advent of new technologies the volume of sophistication is on a tremendous rise. We spend our precious hours of life in deleting spam messages. Many new spamming techniques include the curiosity check of an end-user. An end-user may be a victim if he/she has a high curiosity level.
So now here are some techniques to control spam:
1. Caution:-
Many of us are often irresponsible and share our email-addresses with the people who we don't know or we are just introduced to. Not sharing email-address with the people whom we don't know is 1 way to reduce spam. Another thing which comes under this technique is whenever you forward a message, delete it's history. You may notice that when you receive a forwarded message it often says
Forward from : abc@xyz.com
and some more email-ids, if any. When it's necessary for you to send a message to an unknown person then it's a good practice of listing recipient's email in "Bcc." instead of "To". So now if that person forwards your email to another person than that person is unable to see your email-address.
2. Address Munging (changing appearance):-
Munging means to change appearance to what you really are i.e. changing your identity. This can be done when you post comments on various different websites like a website which collects reviews of users. Munging reduces the probability of your email-address being visible to attackers on web.
3. Not Responding to spam messages:-
Like I said with the advent of new technologies the sophistication of attacks has increased tremendously. So this category can be broadly divided in to
3A. Curiosity Attack Spam:-
Often these days we get an email which contains no body and no subject. This is an attack to generate a database of valid email-addresses for future use. If you respond to such an email then you are sure to receive unwanted mails in near future.
3B. Phishing Attack Spam:-
Links of clone websites are broadcast. If you click on that link and enter your email and password then not only you are sure to receive spam messages but your Email address is under threat as the attacker can gain access to your email-address at any moment and use it for irrelevant reasons.
3C. Advertising Attack:-
It often comes up with fake discounts promises. When user responds to such attack his/her email-address is sent to attackers database for sending many such spam mails.
4. Disabling HTML in E-mail:-
Web browsers these days contain lots of various different functionalities like Display HTML, URLs, Images etc. This can expose users to the images which are offensive in nature in spam. Attackers write code in html that contain web bugs which allows them to see which email-address is a valid address. Javascripts can be written by attackers which can redirect your browser page to the advertising page leading to Information misuse.
5. Reporting Spam:-
User can be smart and track down such offensive spams and then report them. But tracking can be a difficult task as the spam senders are many in numbers.
A free tool called Complainterator may be used in the reporting of spam. The Complainterator will send an automatically generated complaint to the registrar of the spamming domain and the registrar of its name servers.
Conclusion:- Spam cannot be eradicated completely. But it can be avoided if the end user play smart.
Spam is an unwanted rather a message not asked to be sent over the internet. It's sent to large crowd of users for the very purpose of Advertising, Phishing, Spreading Malware etc. Spam is often considered as a major security risk.
Why is spam sent?
Spam is sent to trick the users and get into their personal zone. This is often done by Advertising a product, Phishing, Spreading Malwares etc.
How to control Spam? (By Enduser)
Last year 80% of worlds email-traffic consisted of spam messages. With the advent of new technologies the volume of sophistication is on a tremendous rise. We spend our precious hours of life in deleting spam messages. Many new spamming techniques include the curiosity check of an end-user. An end-user may be a victim if he/she has a high curiosity level.
So now here are some techniques to control spam:
1. Caution:-
Many of us are often irresponsible and share our email-addresses with the people who we don't know or we are just introduced to. Not sharing email-address with the people whom we don't know is 1 way to reduce spam. Another thing which comes under this technique is whenever you forward a message, delete it's history. You may notice that when you receive a forwarded message it often says
Forward from : abc@xyz.com
and some more email-ids, if any. When it's necessary for you to send a message to an unknown person then it's a good practice of listing recipient's email in "Bcc." instead of "To". So now if that person forwards your email to another person than that person is unable to see your email-address.
2. Address Munging (changing appearance):-
Munging means to change appearance to what you really are i.e. changing your identity. This can be done when you post comments on various different websites like a website which collects reviews of users. Munging reduces the probability of your email-address being visible to attackers on web.
3. Not Responding to spam messages:-
Like I said with the advent of new technologies the sophistication of attacks has increased tremendously. So this category can be broadly divided in to
3A. Curiosity Attack Spam:-
Often these days we get an email which contains no body and no subject. This is an attack to generate a database of valid email-addresses for future use. If you respond to such an email then you are sure to receive unwanted mails in near future.
3B. Phishing Attack Spam:-
Links of clone websites are broadcast. If you click on that link and enter your email and password then not only you are sure to receive spam messages but your Email address is under threat as the attacker can gain access to your email-address at any moment and use it for irrelevant reasons.
3C. Advertising Attack:-
It often comes up with fake discounts promises. When user responds to such attack his/her email-address is sent to attackers database for sending many such spam mails.
4. Disabling HTML in E-mail:-
Web browsers these days contain lots of various different functionalities like Display HTML, URLs, Images etc. This can expose users to the images which are offensive in nature in spam. Attackers write code in html that contain web bugs which allows them to see which email-address is a valid address. Javascripts can be written by attackers which can redirect your browser page to the advertising page leading to Information misuse.
5. Reporting Spam:-
User can be smart and track down such offensive spams and then report them. But tracking can be a difficult task as the spam senders are many in numbers.
A free tool called Complainterator may be used in the reporting of spam. The Complainterator will send an automatically generated complaint to the registrar of the spamming domain and the registrar of its name servers.
Conclusion:- Spam cannot be eradicated completely. But it can be avoided if the end user play smart.
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