Tips on Avoiding Spam

Be cautious when reading your messages

• Reserve your UIUC email account for University-related activities and use a secondary email account for non-University business, such as subscribing to personal interest mailing lists, and filling out warranty cards, surveys, or sweepstakes.
• Never reply to a spam message or click on links in the message, including any "unsubscribe" links. Most of the links contained in these messages are designed to transmit a serial number back to the spammer so that the spammer will know that your email address is active and being accessed. The spammer then sells your email address to other spammers as a "premium active" address. You'll start getting even more spam.
• Use an email reader that blocks the remote loading of images. Similar to the "bad links" described in the last tip, many spam messages contain images that trigger a flag when the email message is opened so that the spammer knows your email address is active. Check to see if your email reader offers an option to prevent these images from being loaded.
• Never trust an email from a company or financial institution that asks you to update your account information. Many of these messages contain a link to a phony web site that will gather your account number, password, or other personal information in order to defraud you. If you are in doubt about the legitimacy of a message, contact your institution directly.
• Use anti-spam software. You can sign up for CITES Spam Control to reduce spam sent to your @uiuc.edu email account. Additionally, almost all email readers include anti-spam or junk mail options.
• The Direct Marketing Association has an e-Mail Preference Service (e-MPS). To get off of email lists, you may register with the e-MPS online. For further information, see http://www.dmaconsumers.org/offemaillist.html. Note: CITES cannot guarantee or endorse this service.

Be a "good citizen" when sending email

• When sending email messages to a large number of recipients, use the blind copy field (BCC) to conceal recipients' addresses. Sending email in which all recipients are exposed in the TO field makes the recipients more vulnerable to spammers attempting to harvest active addresses.
• When forwarding a received message for which the sender did not use the BCC field, highlight and delete the addresses of the other recipients so that they don't get forwarded with the message.
• Avoid using attachments. If you are sending an important document via email, remember that everyone is learning to be more cautious these days about opening attachments. If you can, use other methods of transferring files. We recommend you use CITES NetFiles to share documents, photographs, and other information. See the CITES NetFiles Quick Start Guide for more information.

Keep your email address off publicly accessible places

• Do not list your email address on web sites, newsgroups, or public chat rooms. Secure any web pages you create or maintain. If you include a "mailto" link, expect to get more spam. Although not as convenient, it is better to state your email address in a way that only people (not machines) can read, such as displaying an image that contains your email address.

 

Acknowledgement: Many of these tips come from the University of Hartford spam web page, http://uhaweb.hartford.edu/www/spam.htm. Refer to their web page for more information.