Saturday, November 10, 2007

Spams and Scams

After 2 1/2 years of tracking my email, spam and scams are still show up in my inbasket. No matter what the 'experts' tell us, the spammers will always find a way around their anti-spam routines. Scammers are doing just as well and their messages are getting harder to distinguish from the legit email.

Current spam stats are:

2005 - Legit 50%, spam 50%

2006 - Legit 22%, spam 78%

2007 - Legit 32%, spam 68%


If you get a note from your bank or financial institution asking you to log in for any reason to do some sort of update or verify the 'unusual activity' do not ever click on that link. Your banks or financial institutions will never use that method to inform you of the need to update or verify suspicious activities. Delete the note immediately.

If your ISP offers spam filters make use of them. Our ISP offers it andwe get maybe 1 or 2 spams that make it through the filters. When they do get through I flag the message so that our ISP can improve their filtering.

I also note the spam contents for the business using those services. If it is a company that I know I send that company a short note letting them know that they will not be getting my business in the future. If you get one from a company you know hit them where it hurts... their income by taking your business elsewhere and let them know why!