Why and how do spammers get my email address


Spammers have three basic resources for harvesting your information:

  1. Spammers harvested your address using computer programs that guess your address.
  2. You gave it to them inadvertently.
  3. Customer lists and commercial website registries. While many legitimate companies have privacy policies that prevent them from selling lists of email addresses of visitors to their sites, there are equally as many who have no such policies, and no opt-out lists. Remember: read the website's privacy policy before you give out personal details.

But there are additional places where your personal information can be found:

Spammers sell email addresses by the millions. This is a huge industry - companies that buy and sell email lists. However, spammers did not get your address from a distribution list of a legitimate email publication, nor from company email lists which are secured. Generally, company customer and client lists are viewed as a financial asset of a company, and not to be available to competitors.

If you are not sure if a website that asks for your email address is legit, you can check their privacy policy - which should clearly state that it does not ever sell, rent, give, or otherwise provide email addresses to outsiders or third parties.

Learn how to display the full header of a mail message for important clues as to the origin of an email. If you are using Microsoft's Internet Explorer, all you need to do is pull down the "View" menu and select "Headers," then "All." This can be very valuable when people email you things you do not like or find distasteful or dangerous. The keys to tracking where that email came from are in the header of the message. Specifically, one of the lines in a header is the message ID line. While people can forge email addresses, you must control the mail server to change the ID line, so it can be a good way to track down email that bothers you. To investigate further, send an email to the postmaster at that address and ask for help (include the entire original message and the full header). This is a good starting point for the postmaster's investigation.

Learn how to use your mail program well enough so that you do not accidentally send a private email intended for someone special to everyone you know. Make sure that the subject line is filled out when you send an email - and the text of that subject line has a meaningful description. With viruses being spread occasionally through email, and lots of companies sending out emails to massive numbers, smart users look at the subject line of an email to decide whether or not to open or delete it. So a simple "Hi" from an email address you do not recognize should likely be deleted, not opened. Remember that the subject line may be the only part of the email that your recipient looks at to identify if it is worth opening. It makes a big difference to you when you get an email with the subject line: "Changes in office policy on potted plants" and one that says, "Your check will bounce."

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Note: This article was sent to us by: Shayne Roys at 08232010

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