Top Tips for Eliminating Spam

A: The following guidelines will go a long way in helping to reduce the amount of spam in your email inbox.  

1. Personalize your email address.  When you have your own web domain, it ordinarily comes with what's known as a "catch all" email account. Any email addressed to your domain (as in: anything@yourdomainname.com) will show up in your inbox. Spammers, of course, take great advantage of this "convenience". To avoid spam indiscriminately sent to every permutation of username at your domain—

2. Avoid using common/typical email account names, such as info@yourdomainname.com or help@yourdomainname.com, etc. These choices are too obvious, and the first guesses spammers make when trying to infiltrate your inbox.

3. Be discreet about where and how you post your email address on the web. Do not simply post your email address indiscriminately wherever and whenever it's requested, especially on public sites like chat rooms, newsgroups, bulletin boards, etc. Consider adopting a secondary email address to be used solely on public sites. This keeps your personal/primary email address more free of spam, and if your secondary email address gets infiltrated, you'll be more able to let it go and replace it with another.

4. Read the privacy policies of the websites you visit, especially those that you join, subscribe to, or sign up for a membership with. Be they online banking sites, ecommerce shopping sites, newsletters, RSS feeds, podcasts, forums, or another other site that collects your information, they all have a page called "Privacy Policy", "Privacy Statement", "Terms of Use", or "Terms and Conditions". Look for the link, click to the page, and read it - thoroughly. This statement will inform you of exactly how your personal information will and won't be used by the site. If a site you're visiting doesn't state this information explicitly, you might seriously consider not feeding it your private information.

5. Beware the checkboxes selected by default. When you fill out a form on a site, it will often have certain options pre-selected. Read those items carefully and only leave those boxes checked if you really want the services presented. Otherwise, uncheck it, as these are often abundant sources of spam.

6. Avoid phishing scams. A phishing scam is an email that appears to be sent from a company you trust requests your personal information. To avoid being a victim of this kind of spam, ignore it. Delete it. If you want to check whether the email was actually sent by a company you do business with, call the company up on the telephone. But don't use the phone number provided in the email. That may be a lie too. Look up the number through other means and, if they really do need your information, tell it to them, don't email it.

7. Don't forward chain emails. Not only does this clutter inboxes (and all of cyberspace), not to mention perpetuate a potential hoax, but you also risk exposing your email address to untold numbers of other people.

8. Do not, do not, DO NOT ever reply to spam - no matter how angry you are. That only invites more spam.

9. Configure your settings in Spam Assassin. Your HostPapa account comes free with Spam Assassin, which is set to "on" by default.  However, you can go into Cpanel and change the settings or "score" to further tighten up security and decrease what kinds of emails get through.

Read more about Eliminating Spam in our Knowledgebase!

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