Email Spam, also known as "Junk ", is nothing but unwanted . These are usually sent in bulk to a number of recipients without their permission. Such e mails mostly contain identical or near identical content and are often used as a trick to bring the recipient to their website. Some emails market fake products to grab the attention of the reader and redirect the recipient to webs ites to gain access to the recipient's personal information. spam is illeg al in most countries. Service providers and third-party internet security companies have started makin g use of spam detectors and filters to fight against the spammer community. But to counter the attack of spam detectors, spammers resort to deceptive techniques to harvest emails and push their products to the end-user. Spammers have contin uously adopted newer techniques like using random passages of books in emails to cheat the email text readers and using graphics or images so that text readers are unable to interpret the content. How do spammers gather information about the recipients? Spammers usually gather information in one of the three ways mentioned below: A virus gives it to them Viruses that you may have received as a gift attached in a friend's email collec ts information from your inbox and send the same to the spammer. Or if you may h ave unknowingly sent someone an email that contains the virus, then your email a ddress gets collected automatically. This information gets transmitted back to t he spammer as email list. You give it to them This is the most common way in which spammers collect information. When users si gn up for a free gift, giveaway, prize, draw, or other offer with their email pa rticulars, they do not realize that the site they have landed on is not a legiti mate one. This way, the user not only exposes his or her , but also the email addresses of all the people he/she has ever received an email from or sent mails to. The user's friends also fall prey to the same scam. The spammers ' list keeps building. Email harvesting Email harvesting refers to the process in which spammers plant "robots" on every web page and database, to pick up all the email addresses they can find. Your e mail address can be found in one of these ways: Email address you have may have listed on web pages of your own website Email distribution lists used by one of your contacts Community or Club websites that you visit frequently and sites that you particip ate on actively Group archives like Google Groups Corporate or Business staff directories DNS and Whois Servers How to be protected from email spam? Email scam can be compared with common cold. You never know when you are attacke d. Although not much can be done after falling prey, there are some precautionar y measures that can be adopted to avoid getting spammed. Email spam protection c an happen at multiple levels. Personal level protection If you receive an email from a sender whose name is familiar but is not a person who mails you too often, beware! It is always better to read the subject line b efore opening the email. Check whether it is something related to your personal life or workplace. If not, the message is certainly spam. Don't even think about opening emails that try to sell something at highly discounted rates with addit ional goodies attached. Even if you happen to open the email, do not buy on thes e websites. Invest in good anti-virus, anti-spam software. They prevent accidental clicks fr om damaging your computer by preventing unauthorized communication over the netw ork. Spammers can get notified about opening of an email even without the recipient r eplying to the email. They embed links in email spam, usually attached to a pict ure that has a unique name. When the email gets opened the email program tries t o load the picture from their server, telling them that the file was accessed. A nd this way, your email address is traced It is always better to have different email addresses for different needs with o ne of those addresses being sacrificial. The email address that you sacrifice is the one you give to acquaintances, enter in prizes and draws, and make public i n online communities. You can use other addresses to keep in touch with family, friends and for work, isolating it from the world of spam. However, this would n ot be a successful technique if people close to you are not aware about it. Make sure you inform them about your private email id as well as the public one and which they should use to contact you. If you own a website then ensure it is protected from email harvesting. Corporate level protection At a corporate level, employees must be educated about spammy activities. They s hould be told to be careful while filling any personal information from company computers on risky websites. This could be dangerous. Corporates must have stric t guidelines towards the usage of company computers on external sites and educat e employees about the importance of cyber-security. Employees must be instructed to keep their firewalls, virus scanners and removers updated. They should be to ld not promote any email spam within the company network. Companies should emplo y firewalls, removal utilities and spam filters on their network so that email spam and viruses are removed at the mail server itself. Government or State level protection Governments must draft and enforce strong laws and harsh penalties for . The Ban on Deceptive Unsolicited Bulk Electronic Mail Act of 2003 allows the pr osecution of spammers (bulk mailers) under RICO (Racketeering Influenced and Cor rupt Organizations) laws which were created in the US in the year 1970 to eradic ate the Mob (Mafia). RICO laws allow the confiscation of all illegally derived a ssets from an individual or organization. Although US takes spamming seriously, email spam will exist till the world outsi de US takes note of it as a serious crime and penalize the spammers. Make sure y ou work with a credible email hosting provider for your personal and business em ail needs. Tanya Jones is a staff writer for Flying Cow Design, a company that provides qua lity medical website design.

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