What is Internet Spam?

What is internet spam going to do to your computer? Nothing, if you learn what it is and how to avoid harm to your computer.

Internet spam is one of the most prolific problems on the net today. The Internet is a wide open arena for business and personal needs. You can sell, buy, or learn just about anything online these days. With the positive also comes those little negative. The internet is a hotbed of internet spam too.

What is Internet Spam Going to Do to Your Computer?

Spam is anything you don't ask to have sent to you that comes in your email. It generally houses advertising, links that you might be tempted to click on that will sell you something and make a buck for the sender. Here's the thing... clicking on them can net you a lot more than a free trip to Vegas or a new car.

Secondary to that, clicking those links rewards the spammer for engaging in an illegal activity. Spamming is illegal in most states. When you click on the link you actually pay someone for doing something that is illegal. You may also be doing a whole lot more than that. Spam harbors virus and phishing links in many cases. You are asked to click the link and enter your email, username and password. Having done so, you have given the keystroke logger on the other end all the information that they need to steal your identity and use it to buy themselves all the things that they'd like to having using your good credit.

You can see why spam is more than an annoyance. Is there any way to avoid getting spammed? There experts say there are a few methods that will help, although nothing is foolproof certainly.

Best Ways to Avoid Spam

Some of the best ways to avoid getting spammed are to avoid using your email address on the internet unless it's one that you don't mind not using again. Very often spammers will use mail scrapers on an internet website and glean a wide variety of emails from them. Do not put up your regular email when you join a mailing list or some other type of internet site unless you see the small lock that tells you the site is a secure one.

Instead, get a disposable email. One from hotmail or gmail should do the trick and will let you have an email to use that you don't mind getting rid of from time to time. If you use it to join a website and you'd like to give them your real email to stay on the list, you can always do that later, OR, have that particular email forwarded from the disposable account to your popmail.

The second method that you can try if you'd like to use your real email online is to use a variety of allowable characters in your email address. Underscores are hard to scrape by machine. Generally texts work better. Add a few characters to your email and then use it online to join the sites or lists that you'd like to join.

One last method that you can use is an online anti spam filter that you join on a monthly or yearly basis to filter your mail before it comes to your PC. While some can be costly, some are free and are a vast help in stopping the internet spam that comes your way.

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