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The Spammers Ways in Tricking You
By: Mel Maseko
Much of the confusion regarding spam comes from a lack of understanding the everyday email user may have regarding the ways and motivations of the spammers.
The nature of spam has less to do with its commercial content than with the fact that it is unsolicited and sent out in bulk. There are two categories of spam: unsolicited bulk email and unsolicited commercial email.
Tricks of the spammer
The spammer's most fervent hope is that you are ignorant of the tricks and tactics used to spam your inbox. Learning the spammer's nefarious ways is your best protection against spam.
Image-based Spam: The spammer sends out spam that contains an image in GIF format. This image bears the spammy message. Image-based spam is effective in by-passing spam filters because they are generally text-based.
Social engineering: This spammer ploy attempts to fool the recipient into reading the junk email by pretending to be an acquaintance. It involves a junk email that has a "personal" subject line, such as "I'm leaving tomorrow," "I got your message" or "Let's meet again".
Mining message boards and chat rooms: When you post a message to a message board or chat room and leave your email address, automated programs called spambots will find your address and add it to the spammer's mailing list. Much like a listed phone number in the telephone directory, leaving your email at these types of websites makes it public information.
Spam is definitely irritating and maliciously destructive at worst. Buying the right anti-spam software will go a long way toward protecting you from the spammers of the world.
Article Source: http://www.ezarticles.info
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