kmail: How to avoid SPAM

SPAM refers to unsolicited e-mails, often of a commercial nature, sent indiscriminately to multiple mailing lists, individuals, or newsgroups. Usually, once your address has been added to a SPAM list, you receive lots of unwanted mails that clutter your mailbox. Dealing with them may be very time-consuming or raise a security issue, if these mails contain viruses.

That's why is is important to protect yourself against them.

Almost any user that uses his e-mail address might receive SPAM once in a while.

1 - Do not give your e-mail address to anyone

Like your street address or phone number, your e-mail address allows people to reach you easily. That's why, like you would do in the real world, you shouldn't give this information to people or websites that you don't trust or know.

Avoid :

• Publishing your e-mail address to an open website - protect them
• Entering your address in web forms that you don't trust
• Suscribing to mail lists or newsgroups that don't publish their privacy policy
• Giving personal information to a commercial website that doesn't publish its privacy policy
• ...

2 - Create two e-mail addresses, if needed

You have two street addresses : a business address and a home address. Your business address may be published on ads, business cards while your home address is only available to your family or friends...

Do the same for your e-mails ! You may have one public address, that can safely be given to many people and that you can manage with sensitive filters or rules and another one that allows you to share photos and messages with the ones you trust.

As long as commercial websites may send your e-mails - legally, of course -, it is a good idea to create an extra address, if you buy on-line. You may also want to use the "Privacy" options often given by these websites.

3 - Avoid choosing very simple addresses

Of course, your address should be easy to remember. However, it is always a good idea to avoid too simple addresses : some softwares try to send automatically mails to addresses that "may" exist. For example, john@domain.com is easier to find than john.familyname@domain.com, john-2002@domain.com...

1 - Do not answer

Lots of SPAM mails have "Unsuscribe" buttons. Do not use them or reply to the message : this would confirm to the sender that you do exist and that you do read these messages. Instead, you may want to use the "Bounce back to sender" feature of the "Mail" application included with Mac OS X : your message will be bounced back with a "fatal error" message or to simply delete it.

2 - Do not allow images and HTML messages

Setup your mail software so that it doesn't download automatically images or displays HTML messages. You will loose some functionality but this will prevent someone from tracking the message by checking if you downloaded the images included in it or not. Note that some commercial websites legally use this system to check if you read their most important mails : check with them before disabling this option.

3 - Use Mail "Junk Mail" feature

Mac OS X v. 10.2 Jaguar includes a great feature called "Junk Mail". This cutting-edge technology allows you to delete SPAM more efficiently than ever. More information may be easily found there.

4 - What else ?

Check with the domain administrator. Someone may be sending mail without the consent of the domain administrator. In that case, especially with ISPs, it should be easy to find a solution. Most ISPs have an e-mail address that can be used in order to report SPAM.

I hope that this FAQ has been useful. Of course, would you have any additional questions, don't hesitate to post on this forum !

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