by Frances Stanford

Created on: November 21, 2010

Spam messages in your inbox can cause havoc with your computer and your life in general. The messages you receive can give spammers access to your personal information and your bank accounts. You could be wiped out financially if these unscrupulous individuals do gain access to your banking information and by gaining access to your personal information they can take out loans in your name, although this is not as prevalent as it once was with the introduction of privacy regulations.

The goal of everyone who uses the Internet on a daily basis is to decrease the number of spam messages they receive. Since the majority of these messages come from sites where you sign up to receive additional information, you should be very wary of giving out any information on sites that you don’t trust. Just by adding your email address opens you up to spam because many of these sites are linked to others and there are many that sell your email address. The number of online locations that can see and use your email address increases the likelihood that you will receive unwanted emails.

If there are specific sites from which you would like to receive additional information or become a member, you should read the privacy statement of the site. If the site is not secure there will probably not be such a statement for you to read. Make sure that you check the sites list of partners because once you sign up, there is a pretty good chance you will start receiving promotional messages from these sites as well.

It is essential that you have an email address for your junk mail or what you may think is junk mail. By using this address for such messages, you can screen them and not endanger your regular address. Once you reply to even one message, your email address could be compromised and spam messages sent out to everyone in your friend or contact list.

If and when you do receive spam emails, mark them as such in your inbox. Block the sender and in this way you will avoid receiving any more messages from this sender. By marking it as spam, the email filters will identify it as such and place it in the appropriate folder so that you can delete it and send it to the trash.

One of the worst things you can ever do is to click on any links embedded in messages you receive from friends. Before you do, contact the sender to ensure that it is a safe link and that it will not increase the number of spam emails you receive.

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