How to avoid spam

If you have a mailprogram with filters, which most mail programs have, there are a number of things you can do to avoid receiving spam. I am going to list a few simple things you can do, but if you want to read more, I recommend About.com's spam series . In filter you can basically decide what folders in your mailbox that the incoming mails should be forwarded to. This is practical not only for spam but also for mailing lists and similar things. You decide what folder the mails are to go to by specifying certain phrases or words that is or isn't in any of the parts of the header, such as TO, CC/BCC, From and so on. There are a few things that spammed mails have in common.

• "Friend@public.com" in the To: part of the header. Thus you can make a filter that filters all incoming mails containing "Friend@public.com" in the To: line to the trash folder.
• "<>" in the Message ID: part of the header. Thus you can make a filter that filters all incoming mails containing "<>" in the Message ID: line to the trash folder.
• If your filter has a "does not contain" option ( Yahoos's mail client does) you can filter messages that does not have your e-mail address in the To: section to the trash and an additional filter that does the same if the Cc/Bcc: section doesn't contain your e-mail address. This type of filter has pretty much eliminated all spam from my mailbox. However, this can cause problems if you are on mailing lists which send mails direct to the email address specified (unlike OnElist and Egroups for instance), so you may want to check your trash from time to time.

If you receive a lot of forwarded and unsolicited messages on ICQ, there are a few efficient things you can do to avoid it completely.

• Open ICQ and click on the ICQ-button, choose Security & Privacy from the menu. Under Security in "Change ContactList Authorization" choose "My authorisation is required".
• Under Ignore List, check the box for "Do not accept Multi-Recipient Messages from" and choose " users not on my users list" in the drop-down list.