SolveYourProblem
eLearning Series:
Stop SPAM eMail Once & For All : Free Guide
10 Pages
How
Are These Companies
Getting My Email Address?
A company can
give your email address to an affiliate of theirs when you
give it out, but that is not the only way that a company
can get your email address. These days, companies are getting
smarter in their efforts to attain email addresses. Here
are some of the ways that companies are getting a hold on
your inbox.
Personal
Homepages
Just about everyone
has a homepage of their own these days. Almost every internet
service provider (ISP) offers you a place to put up your
own website. The problem behind this is that when you do
put up your website, you often feel obligated to leave your
contact information.
This is not a
very good idea if you are looking to avoid spam because you
have just advertised your email address. A resourceful person
will take down your information so that they can spam you
later.
It is rare that
anybody thinks that they can receive spam simply from putting
out their contact information, but it is the easiest way
to do it. Spammers can easily gather all of your information
by using what is called “Harvesting Software”.
Harvesting software
is basically a program that searches the internet for the
@ symbol. In searching for it, they recognize that this is
likely an email address and therefore it leaves you open
to receive their spam. Most of the time, spammers are unaware
if the email address is even active or used at all. That
is why they can put out so many of them.
By harvesting
as many of the addresses that use the @ symbol, spammers
are basically guessing that at least 50,000 emails they send
out of 1,000,000 of them will be viable. In most cases, regular
people like you prove them right by responding to them.
Once you reply
to one of the spam that you receive, you have announced to
them that they can continue to send you email. You should
know that they will often report your email address to other
companies and their affiliates which will only lead to your
receiving even more spam.
Registration
Forms
Whenever you are
interested in signing up for a service online, you would
serve yourself better not to leave your email address unless
you are certain that you want to receive news and product
announcements from that company.
Nearly all registration
forms that you fill out can lead to spam. That is why these
companies ask you to fill out registration forms. Some companies
leave you with the option of receiving emails and notices
from them. You should always read the fine print of a registration
form before you submit it.
There is usually
a box that you can check if you do not wish to receive emails
from the company or its affiliates. If you do not wish to
receive them, you should be certain to check that box. If
that box doesn’t exist, then you may want to forget the registration
all together, just to be sure.
Of course, it
is common for some companies to place the option on receiving
emails or not and still send you emails. That is why you
should always check the privacy policy of the company first.
It is the law that all companies let you know whether or
not they share your information with others. It is also common
for people to ignore the privacy policy information.
That is why you
should always read through it.
It does take some
extra time on your part to go through these policies, but
you can save yourself the effort of having to go through
and delete spam, which is more annoying. By not going through
the privacy policy, you are playing roulette with your inbox.
This registration
spam also applies when you are registering a new piece of
software. After you have installed the software, there is
often the task of registering. Many of the companies tell
you that registering it is so that you can be informed of
any product upgrades for that software. But you should know
that they are also used to send you every other notice about
their company as well. If you don’t want to receive this
type of information, you have to refuse the registration
process.
 
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