Preventing Spam in the Home or Home Office

Overview

Home computers are more vulnerable to spam and malware than in an office environment for a number of reasons.

* Multiple users, often including younger children.
* No corporate firewall to filter the spam.
* Older out of date programs.
* Reluctance of local ISPs to filer user mail
* Less technical users.

Here’s a few tips and tricks on avoiding spam today and what to do if the spammers do get your number.

3 Tricks to Prevent Spam

Disposable email addresses

If your ISP allows or if you own your own domain, you can set up disposable email addresses. If you find yourself registering at a site you might think will spam you later, you simply use the disposable email address.

Disguise your email if posting in a public place.

If you’re leaving comments on a newsgroup or a blog one way to prevent spam is to disguise your email address. For example NOSPAMusername@example.com

Careful with those Checkboxes

Many web forms have small check boxes that authorize the site to sell your information to third parties. This allows the spammers to spam you while staying within the law because you “opted in.”

What to do if the Spammers Attack

If the spammers have your email address, there are really only two ways to git rid of the spam. Change your email address or use some sort of spam filter.

Changing your email address might be an ugly option but it is very effective. If you do change, you can usually find a way to check both address for a month or two until everyone you correspond with gets the update.

Spam filters come in two varieties. Workstation based and server based. If you have your own domain or you want someone else to manage your spam filter for you, you might want to use a server based email filter.

If you can’t do that and want to use a spam filter on your home computers, we recommend a complete package that does spam filtering, virus protection and internet security. One of the most popular is Norton Internet Security 2009.

One of the reasons Norton Internet Security is great for home use is that a single copy can be installed on up to 3 computers, which is a great cost savings.  In addition to spam filtering and anti-virus protection, Norton Internet Security provides parental control (as an add one) which you can download free.