Preventing spam

The following offers key steps to avoid spam in your inbox as well as an introduction to spam.

Top Ten Ways to Deal with Spam

• Don't click unsubscribe. This option towards the end of a spam email is aimed at validating your email address.
• Don't use the standard mailto: tag. Spammers can harvest email addresses from users clicking on such tags on web pages.
• Use only trusted web-based forms. Depending on the type of web form, spammers can pick up email addresses from such forms.
• Don't view a suspicious message. But if you cannot tell from the subject line, be sure not to open any attachments or click on links.
• Do spend time complaining about spam. If you receive much spam, voice your statement responsibly to your local computer department or to spam@berkeley.edu; from Thunderbird's menu use Message, Forward As, Attachment to forward the spam message, or drag and drop the message into the address area of your own message (see also What can I do about the spam that I get?).
• Don't ever buy anything from a spammer. Instead use a reputable company that sells the product you are considering purchasing.
• Do realize that you may have OK'd the spam. If you have signed up to receive announcements from a company, affilated sites may send you emails.
• Understand spam filters. Powerful email tagging and filters, server-based or client software, can leave your inbox relatively free of spam.
• Do stay informed. Technology and laws are evolving at an increasing speed, and campus publishes articles regularly about this issue.
• And perhaps most importantly, Keep spam in perspective. Spam is a nuisance at work, not work itself; proper prevention goes a long way dealing with spam.

Introduction to Spam

Spam is generally defined as unsolicited mass emailing, which means that you have not requested or consented to receiving it. Often you have though; when signing up to become a member of a reward system offered by companies such as airlines and car rentals or accepting convenient access to ticket venues and online newspapers, there may in the process have been little check boxes on the web page asking your permission to send various commercial offers by the company itself or by its partners. This type of mass emailing is not unsolicited and therefore not considered spam.

Emails sent by various offices on campus to staff, faculty and students are also not spam, although you have not explicitly asked for them. Further examples of such valid mass emailing exist, and wherever possible, the sender's emails usually include the means by which the recipient can opt out of receiving the emails. Or if you like to receive them, a mailbox can be created for each kind, ideally with a corresponding filter that transparently moves the emails into a nicely structured place and out of your inbox.

When it comes to actual spam however, it is best to resist the temptation to unsubscribe. Sometimes clicking a link that promises to remove you lets the spammer know that your email address is valid, which means you might be spammed even more. Often spammers don't know your email address; they simply send out an abundance of emails hoping that many of them are valid. If they do know your email address, it may be because it is used on many public lists or appears on public web pages. To reduce the address harvesting, using "someone at berkeley dot edu" rather than "someone@berkeley.edu" may help.

To reduce the number of unwanted emails in the inbox, spam filters are in place on servers like CalMail as well as being offered by client email software such as Eudora. The basic idea is that emails viewed as spam by the spam filters are put aside in the special spam mailbox, leaving your inbox cleaner. It is not a perfect science however, so you are encouraged to check your spam mailbox from time to time to check for any valid emails. By the same token, there may occasionally be some mail in your inbox which is spam. To improve the situation, Eudora includes a training feature.

In those remaining situations when spam emails arrive in your inbox, the following is generally recommended. The first step is to make sure the incoming email is valid; if the sender, the subject field as well as the tone of the body text all ring a bell for you, it is likely fine, but otherwise it should be put in your spam or trash mailboxes. You are additionally encouraged never to forward unknown emails nor to open an attachment from a suspicious email.

If you use Thunderbird (Macintosh or Windows) and would like to train Thunderbird to think more like you in terms of which emails constitute spam, clicking the Junk icon on the toolbar labels and moves highlighted emails from the inbox to the junk mailbox and vice versa. Eudora has a similar mechanism for spam. Used properly, you will soon experience an inbox comfortably free of spam.