All About Safe Computing by Rev. Linda Smallwood Table of Contents You Can Help Stop SPAM! What is Phishing? How to Spot Email Scams How to Spot Spyware on Your Computer You Can Help Stop SPAM!

I receive a lot of email messages that have been sent to a group of people with everyone's address displayed in the "To:" or "Cc:" fields. And I receive a lot of spam! Coincidence? Not necessarily. Please read the following and together, let's start protecting each other's identities on the Internet and stamp out SPAM — or at least help to reduce it! How the spammers got your email address... It is estimated that spammers send out between 1 million to 100 million spam emails every day! In addition to purchasing spam address lists from other spammers, they use programs — sometimes referred to as 'WebBots' — that constantly sweep the internet looking for unprotected email addresses. The three primary sources available to spammers for collecting email addresses are: Unprotected email addresses in emails sent to a group of people. Every time someone sends a group email and displays everyone's addresses in the "To:" or "Cc:" fields, they are publishing those addresses on the Internet for spammers to harvest. Unprotected email addresses in forwarded emails. If you forward an email with other people's addresses displayed in the previous forward(s), you are helping to 'publish' those addresses to the Internet over and over again. Unprotected email addresses on websites. If you display your email address on a website, then your address is publicly 'published' for spammers' WebBots to easily detect. How to send emails to a group of people... We can do a lot to help stamp out SPAM by simply taking the following steps to protect one another's addresses on the Internet. To send a new email to more than one person, use the "Bcc:" (blind courtesy copy) function* in your email handler. When the recipients receive your message, the email will automatically display "Undisclosed Recipients" in the "To:" field and their address will not display. Hence, there are no 'published' email addresses to harvest. To forward emails from others: No one likes to click through multiple attached emails just to get to the one that actually has the message you want to read. If the email you received has several attachments from being forwarded multiple times, first click the "Forward" link or button from the original email. After clicking "Forward", you can then edit the original message. Delete any other addresses that are displayed, including the original sender's address. Add any text you want your friends to read. Then, use the "Bcc:" function* to send it to others. Optional. Some IT professionals also suggest you remove "Fwd" from the "Subject" line. * If you don't know how to find and use the "Bcc:" function, your Address Book should display three different sending options: "To:", "Cc:" (courtesy copy), and "Bcc:" (blind courtesy copy). Or, you can select the option in your email program to "show all headers". Then, the "Bcc:" field should automatically appear at the top of the new message. If you need assistance, feel free to contact me. How to handle petitions... Have you ever gotten an email petition that asks you to add your name and address and to forward it to others? The email can be forwarded on and on and can collect thousands of names and email addresses. Professional spammers love these because of the wealth of valid names and email addresses contained therein. If you want to support the petition, send it as your own personal letter to the intended recipient. Your position may actually carry more weight as a personal letter than a laundry list of names and email address on a petition. How to handle 'tracked' or 'traced' emails... Don't believe the ones that say the email is being traced. It is not possible for Microsoft or AOL or Yahoo or any other group to 'track' emails. The only ones who benefit from this action are spammers. How to handle "Amber Alerts" or "Virus Alerts"... Before you forward an "Amber Alert" or "Virus Alert", check it out. Many are junk mail that's been circling the net for years. You can check the validity of an email's content at www.truthorfiction.com or www.snopes.com. If it isn't valid, please don't pass it on! About removing your address from a Spammer's list... Don't respond! Spammers do not know which of the millions of addresses on their lists are real, which are working or not. They're simply spraying their junk at every address they can find. If you send the spammer a "remove me" message, you will have confirmed to the spammer that: Your address is 'live'. Your ISP doesn't use spam filters. You actually open and read spams. You are the perfect candidate for more spam. A 'live' address is a valuable address. Spammers sell live addresses at a premium as "confirmed deliverable" addresses to yet more spammers. If you don't want your address to end up on endless spammers' lists, do not confirm to the spammer that your address is real and working. How to handle website email address(es)... If you have a website, don't publish your email address on it. There are a couple of options available to you to receive email from your website and protect your address from spam. One that I've seen lately utilizes the "@" symbol with spaces before and after (i.e., "pastor-linda @ myredeemerlives.com") to display the person's address, thereby making it illegible to spammers' WebBots. Or, you can use any number of webmaster services to create an email form that keeps your address hidden. I use www.bravenet.net, which provides a very nice free email form. Click here to see what I'm talking about. References: Nick Bolton, Firetrust.com Wikipedia — The Free Encyclopedia Copyright © 2007. LetterPerfect Online™. All rights reserved.