Thursday 21 April 2011

Why to lose your privacy because of the lack of knowledge? (Spam E-mails)

Why to lose your privacy because of the lack of knowledge? (Spam E-mails)
keywords: privacy, spam e-mails, unwanted e-mails, unsolicited e-mails, data protection, online scam
One of the sources that your mail box receive spam e-mails (Unwanted e-mails, Junk e-mails or Unsolicited e-mails) is return to the unknown activity that you make while using the internet or by joining with unnecessary sites or software. As most of spam mails send by unknown party to you, from unknown sites or e-mails; in which it might make you confuse as how these people knew about my e-mail address, more surprisingly that some of these e-mails might send and base on your consent and/or contain your first name!!!
Well, if you face this problem then you must reconsider your online activities. Whereas, one of the sources that some sites and/or persons based on to send unwanted e-mails to others’ mail box is by using the lack of knowledge that online users have and face nowadays
In order to be sure about what I’m talking about, ask yourself these questions:
How many times you joined a site that you gain a good knowledge about its activities?
How many times have you ever investigate about a site or software or any online activity before you joined it?
Have you ever replay to the sender of a spam e-mail asking him/her how they got your e-mail or to stop sending you e-mails, and did he/she replay?
How many times you gave your e-mail address to unknown person?
Have you ever read the agreement of use of the site that you are interested in, before joining it?
How many times you joined to a newsletter that presented by a person who claims that he will teach you something such as how to be rich or such so?
Have you ever joined a group of users in order to enter or develop online business?
Ok enough questions, now let’s move to your situation (or our situation), whereas the main question herein is how we can less or decrease the possibility of receiving spam e-mails? (There is no method until now that can resolve this problem totally)
Before I tell you how to do so, let me remind you about the ways that people use to collect your e-mail address to use it in their business (advertisements), as most of the common ways are:According to the Message Anti-Abuse Working Group, the amount of spam email was between 88-92% of email messages sent in the first half of 2010
1.      Chat rooms (your consent)
2.      Websites (your consent)
3.      customer lists (your consent)
4.      newsgroups (your consent)
5.      viruses (without your consent)
6.      online business sites or blogs (your consent)
7.      affiliate programs (your consent and in some cases without)
8.      service provider sites (see third party term in any online agreement) (your consent)
9.      others (you should know that our e-mail addresses are sold to spammers and scammers nowadays) (without your consent)
Now to the main part again, how we can less or decrease the possibility of receiving such unwanted e-mails. Well, the solution is simply by:
1.      not filling any form asking you to put your e-mail address when you do not know anything about the person or the site that presented that form
2.      not giving your e-mail address to anyone you do not know
3.      not joining any service or tribe when you have a suspicion if it suit you or not
4.      reading the agreement of use when you join any site that provide a service you want, especially the terms of privacy, data protection, user data and the use of third party (as those terms will determine how your data will be used and by who)
5.      using a secondary e-mail address for any activity you want to try it but still have a suspicious on (alternative solution)
6.      replaying, in some cases, and declaring in your e-mail that you will make a claim if you received anymore e-mails from that person/ party (this solution depend on the sender and the e-mail content in addition to the method that this e-mail sent to you whether by automated or manual method) this tool is not always affective but in some cases it is
7.      not filing any joining box asking you for your e-mail to receive an e-book, report, gift, video or any similar things when you do not need such or if you have a suspicion in that party
These tools can be used by any user in order to control his privacy and protect it from spammers and scammers, there are many others but these are the most important tools that must be adopted by any online user




If you have a question or a comment please feel free to place it under this post
Mohammad Al-Thunibat

2 comments:

  1. Thanks for all this valuable information. I'll definitely keep it in mind.

    ReplyDelete
  2. I hope that such posts can be useful, thank you for passing by and leaving a comment

    ReplyDelete