How to protect yourself from spam. How to protect your email from spam

Email spam is often defined as “unsolicited email.” They come in three types:

1. Advertising messages. Unnecessary advertisements and sales pitches often bombard your work email, distracting your attention and wasting your work time. Do not respond to such emails, otherwise your address will be identified as “live” and you will receive even more spam.

2. Fraudulent invitations. Letters from scammers become especially numerous during periods of economic downturns and crises. As a rule, their headlines promise manna from heaven or pretend to be an official newsletter. In most cases, their goal is to direct you to a link to click. The result of the click may be the installation of spyware on your PC, and in the future, the opening of passwords and the emptying of electronic accounts.

3. Newsletters. We are talking about mailings to which you were subscribed accidentally or unnoticed. Often at the very bottom of the body of the letter there is a clickable phrase “Unsubscribe from mailing list”, which allows you to remove your address from the database of this mailing list. If it is not there, delete the mailing using one of the methods described below.

Send spam to a special folder

There are two ways to get rid of spam that is already coming to your email:

Manually

If spam isn't overwhelming your inbox too much, you can manually flag unwanted emails. All major email services (Yandex.Mail, Mail.ru, Gmail, Rambler) allow you to do this in two clicks.

Select a letter in your Inbox, check the box next to it and click the appropriate button: “Spam”, “This is spam” or “Add to spam”. The letter will end up in a separate Spam folder, from where it will be automatically deleted after a few days. In the future, all letters from the sender’s address, as well as similar ones, will go to this folder, bypassing the “Inbox”.

Attention! Sometimes the necessary emails may end up in the Spam folder, so check it when you are expecting an email. You can send such an email back to your inbox by checking the box and clicking the Not Spam button on the toolbar.

Automatically

Set up a filter that will immediately filter out all unnecessary emails. Let's take a closer look at how to do this in Yandex.Mail and Mail.ru, the most popular mail services on the RuNet.

Creating a rule in Yandex.Mail:

1. Select: Mail – All settings – Rules for processing incoming mail – Create a rule.

3. Then set the conditions “If”: “From” – here you enter the address from which you receive spam.

4. Below you need to choose which action to perform: “Delete” or “Put in the folder” - “Spam”. Everything else can be left blank.

5. Click the “Create rule” and “Apply to existing emails” button to get rid of the spam you have already received.

Setting up a filter in Mail.ru:

1. In the “Inbox” folder, check the box next to the emails whose sender you want to block.

2. On the “More” tab, select “Create filter”.

3. On the page that opens, the address of the selected sender will appear in the “If” block. In the “To” block, select the “Delete forever” value (or “Move to folder” – “Spam”).

5. To complete the procedure, in the “My filtering rules” block to the right of the created filter, click on the “Filter” link.

6. Check the result in the “Inbox” folder: all messages from this recipient should be deleted from the list (or moved to the “Spam” folder).

Protect your inbox

How does your email address end up in a spammer database? There are programs, spam bots, that collect email addresses throughout the Internet and transmit them to services that send spam letters through this database, sometimes several thousand a day. To minimize the risk of being included in a spammer database in the future, adhere to the following simple rules:

1. Do not register your E-Mail on an unverified resource whose reputation is in doubt. It is also better to pass by a “dead” resource that does not have new publications or recent user comments.

2. To register on secondary resources, create an additional mailbox so as not to put your work or personal E-Mail at risk.

3. Pay attention to the “Subscribe to newsletter” item, which is most often located at the bottom under the registration form. Without a shadow of a doubt, uncheck it if the newsletter from this resource does not interest you.

4. Avoid popularizing your email address on forums and other open sources. If you still need to provide your postal address, then fill out the entry as follows: name (dog) domain (dot) ru. With this form of entry, it is much less likely that a spambot will recognize your address.

If time has already passed and spammers are powerfully attacking your corporate mailbox every day, then security programs will help get rid of spam. However, installing them on the server requires special knowledge and access rights. Contact your system administrator to resolve the problem, this is his responsibility.

The Internet is a very useful and convenient invention of mankind. But it is fraught with many hidden dangers. The main ones are SPAM and viruses.

SPAM is dangerous because you are daily exposed to mass advertising mailings (they offer to buy, sell something, earn “one hundred thousand millions” without doing anything, etc.)
Viruses usually lead to much more dire consequences. Firstly, your computer can be used for mass mailings. Secondly, you can lose all your passwords from wallets and Internet payment systems, ICQ number, credit card numbers, in general, everything that can be lost. In addition, this virus can be sent to all your friends via ICQ and e-mail.

But all this can be avoided if you follow a number of not very complicated rules.

You should be careful about the files that come to you by mail.

If you receive a letter without warning that contains the name of your friend in the “sender” line, do not rush to open it. First, try to contact the person from whose address this letter was sent (you can contact by phone, ICQ or email), and find out if he really sent it? If it turns out that he did not send it, advise him to urgently check his computer for viruses. And be sure to delete this letter (and from the trash too).

If the sender is unavailable, and you urgently need to find out what was sent to you, then it is better to contact a specialist, but you can also try to handle it yourself. To do this, you first need to save the attached file on your computer in a separate folder, but under no circumstances open it. Next you need to check the extension. There are so-called dangerous extensions (for example: exe, com, pif, vbs, vsh, lnk, bat, cmd) that can harm you when opened. If the file has exactly this extension, it is better not to open it until the circumstances are clarified.

Do not respond to advertising emails

If you receive a promotional email, you should not respond to it. If you respond to it, you will show that your mailbox is still “alive” and is always ready to accept new SPAM. In addition, if you are asked to unsubscribe by clicking on the link below, do not do so. In general, you should not open links contained in advertising emails. By clicking on this link, you can again confirm that your mailbox is “alive”.

No need to choose a simple name for your mailbox

When registering on a mail server, you, as a rule, try to choose a simpler name for yourself (for example: vasia, katia, sasha and others). This is understandable: such a name is easier to remember, and it looks beautiful! But the fact is that the SPAMer, when compiling his mailing list, uses the simplest and most popular names. And your name can easily be on this list too. Therefore, it is recommended to choose a name that is more complex (“non-dictionary”).

Simple passwords should not be used

Your password should not:

Match login;
Be too short;
Consist of only numbers;
Consist of symbols that are on the same row on the keyboard;
Be the word "password".

It is a common practice to type Russian words in the English layout. The option is not bad, but you should choose a word that is not a dictionary one, and besides, you may have problems typing such a password in the absence of a Russian keyboard. Try to store passwords carefully (do not write your password down on a piece of paper or in draft SMS messages on your phone).

Don't leave your email address anywhere

Very often, when registering, you are asked to provide an e-mail. But before you do this, think carefully. If you are confident in the reliability of this server (for example, it could be an old trusted forum or a large Internet service), and the list of registered users will not fall into the hands of SPAMers, then you can leave your real address.

There are times when you need to register, but you don’t want to leave your address. In this case, it is advisable to get yourself an additional mailbox, specifically for such registrations, or use the mailinater.com service (when registering on a suspicious site, you indicate the mailing address [email protected], register, then go to the website mailinater.com, enter the login you chose (no password is needed) and you can view the letter sent to you upon registration there). Plus, make sure that on all forums that you visit, the “do not show my e-mail” to other users checkbox is selected in your account settings.

Do not click “OK” in dialog boxes on unfamiliar sites

Before clicking anything on an unfamiliar site, you need to carefully read what you are being asked to do. If they offer to install any program or update, do not agree. If you receive a message from your browser stating that the content on the page is not safe, then choose the option that will ensure your safety. Such warnings should not be ignored.

Do not install software of unknown origin

When traveling on the Internet and downloading various “mini-programs,” you run the risk of downloading some kind of virus along with the program. Many “mini-programs” and “gag programs” are created precisely for this purpose.

Install updates in a timely manner

Many programs can download updates (do not confuse updates with new versions of programs). And this is very important. Let's assume (and, most likely, this is the case) that you have some kind of anti-virus program installed. And every day more and more new viruses appear on the Internet, but she knows nothing about them, and therefore cannot successfully fight, and for this she needs updates to the virus definition database. Such updates are usually performed automatically, or the program prompts you to check after a certain period of time. It is very important to update your antivirus and operating system (update options: Windows XP - Start / Settings / Control Panel / System / Automatic Updates). Don't forget that the most important thing when using the Internet is attention (especially to little things) and common sense.

If you are tired of cleaning your daily e-mail from a bunch of spam sent from “Noneymovsky” addresses, then it is recommended to set up a filter for your email inbox, limiting the list of addresses whose letters will fall into “Inbox” . The rest of the messages will go directly to the trash or another folder, depending on the options you set in the filter settings. It is not recommended to use third-party software to clean up junk mail.

You risk losing access to it, because... To connect the software to your email and work with it, you will need to provide information from your email account. Use exclusively intra-system functionality.

Protecting e-mail from spam through filter settings in Yandex.Mail

In this service, the incoming email filter utility is simple, fast, easy to use and has advanced functionality, unlike other projects: [email protected] And Gmail.

To go to the incoming message filter settings, click on the link with the name "Tune" in the left menu of the site Yandex.Mail , and then go to the tab.

After completing the above steps, click the button “Create rule”, then you will be redirected to the options section inbox filter.

Creating a spam filter

1. First you need to set the condition for determining the corresponding letters.

Yandex offers several options for sorting letters: by sender, subject name, title, parts of the message content.

In the second field, select a filtering condition: contains/does not contain text (or part of it), specified in the third field.

For example, if you want to filter messages from a specific address, then in the first field select “From whom”, then in the second field select the criterion “Contains”, and in the third field enter addresses or service domains, from whom you do not want to receive emails.

If you create a list of addresses from which you want to receive messages, it is recommended to select the criterion “Does not contain”, and in the third field enter the sender names and trusted domains.

1.1. You can also create several conditions for filtering letters: click the button “Add condition”, create it, and then select the criteria by which messages will be filtered - if both conditions are met or at least one of them is met.

2. Then you need to note the actions that the service robot will perform after identifying messages that satisfy the given condition. In our case, check the option to move these emails to the spam folder.

3. To save filter settings, click the button “Create rule”.

To edit the settings of the created rule, go to the section where you will see the entire list of your filters and the available operations with them: editing , deletion , enable/disable .

Filter testing

The filter we created works according to the following algorithm: if the sender's address contains “@mail.ru”/“@inbox.ru” , then this letter will be automatically moved to the folder.

To check the filter’s operation, we’ll send a letter from your account on the service. Mail.ru , after which we will see that it has automatically moved to the spam folder.

Messages from your favorite editors in the right folders

You can also save yourself from searching for the weekly top news newsletter you need in a pile of letters by setting up automatic sorting of sent messages into specific folders.

For example, to send out news bulletins from the editor "News" you can name the folder with the appropriate name, and in the condition for setting up the filter, specify address, from which the newsletters of this editorial office are sent, and check the option to automatically forward messages from it to the desired folder.

Protection of mail from spam on the page. Anti-spam coder E-mail from spam robots.

Tired of a flood of spam emails? Don't know how to protect your Email from spam bots! Use our online email address encoding service and forget about spam once and for all.

Users are often surprised to wonder where so much spam comes from, how do spammers find out their email addresses?

In fact, users themselves give the opportunity to spam them by leaving their Email on various kinds of open access pages, commenting on some article or blog, participating in a discussion on some forum, etc. etc... This is where the spam databases are actually replenished with your contact information.

I think everyone knows that by leaving your email address in clear text on various sites: forums, blogs, etc..., you thereby allow various scanners, grabbers and spam bots to find your address for further use in spam mailings. And after a while, your mailbox is simply full and becomes full of spam.

Our service allows you to protect your mailbox from this type of spam by encoding your Email. The method of masking an email address occurs by converting a postal address or any other text into a Unicode character code.

This method is perfectly supported by all browsers, and for the average person it will not create any difficulties, but bots scanning the source code of the site simply will not see your E-mail address, since it is simply not in the source code, or rather, it is there but in encoded form.

Of course, this method does not guarantee you 100% protection from spam, since there are already spam bots that have learned to decode and decipher this encryption method, but still there are not many of them, and many do not benefit from this, because all spammers press in bulk, so to speak, and there is no point in them wasting their time setting up decryption programs.

Once you have generated and encoded the text using the form above, you can copy the resulting string output.

You can use this line with an encrypted Email on any website, forum, blog, guest book, or on your website without fear that your email address will end up in the spam database of spammers.

Nowadays, spam is a very big headache for all users of the World Wide Web. Every day, thousands, but probably probably millions of spam robots, surf the Internet in search of sites with open Email addresses and pull them out of the sites’ pages. And the only winners from this are the spammers themselves, since they are happy that they received a new address database from which they earned money, and the average user is afraid to leave and show their mailbox so as not to become their victim.

Site administrators, of course, also do not sit idle and try in every possible way to stop this flow of spam. Accordingly, our service provides you with the opportunity to independently protect your Email from an evil spammer and indicate it in such a form that the spam bot cannot parse it but so that it is understandable to real people.

It’s not for nothing that the expression “Whoever didn’t hide, the spammer is not to blame!” appeared on the Internet! In general, as they say, God protects those who are taken care of.

Hello, dear readers of the blog site. Surely you have already encountered spam, even if you didn’t know exactly what this outrage is called. And for this it is not even necessary. Spam also pours into your regular mailbox with enviable regularity - these are the same countless advertising booklets that are slipped to you in the hope that you will order or buy something.

So, spam is just that, an annoying one, creeping in from all sides advertising(but not only advertising - there are worse things). You didn’t order it, you don’t need it, but he rushes and rushes from every corner. The information you need can easily get lost in this heap and you have to spend a lot of time sifting through it.

In our computer age, the main source of spam. And besides advertising spam mailings can also be dangerous both for your wallet (phishing, social engineering, scams) and for your computer (viruses, worms, Trojans).

What does the word Spam mean, what does it look like and how can you fight it, you will learn by looking at this short article. I hope it will be interesting (well, certainly useful - I promise you that).

Spam - what is it?

What does the word SPAM mean?

Self word Spam comes from the name of canned meat, which was vigorously advertised after the end of the Second World War (obviously, it was necessary to urgently sell out the soldiers' meat rations).

The advertising was so aggressive, comprehensive and ubiquitous that this word (and the associated “sediment”) was remembered, but only because of the intrusive advertising that appeared along with it in conferences (then still on the Fidonet, if anyone remembers).

The word stuck, especially since intrusive advertising did not become less, but rather the opposite. When email gained popularity, unauthorized mass advertising and malicious mailings became commonplace. Such mailings were profitable for spammers, because the necessary information was communicated to a large number of people without any special costs.

But It's not limited to email. They spam in private messages on social networks, on forums, in instant messengers, on message boards, in comments to blogs, open for editing and adding text by anyone. They will also spam your phone, for example by calling you advertising or sending advertising SMS messages.

Where can you find him on the Internet?

E-mail- it's just a Klondike for spammers. With the help of mass mailings you can sell anything, you can deceive and rob, you can infect computers and send worms. Databases for mass mailings are collected independently (with the help of programs), or purchased from those who do this professionally.
Forums, comments blogs, wiki sites and message boards - here, essentially, everyone is allowed to leave messages and spammers find it difficult to resist spamming. This is not always advertising - often in this way, webmasters try to get a free link to their site so that it ranks higher in the Yandex or Google search results for various queries. This brings them traffic and money.
Social media and dating sites - spam is very common among incoming personal messages. It is also available in the comments to messages.
Messengers (like ) are also susceptible to this scourge.
SMS-messages from people unknown to you of an advertising nature. Probably everyone is familiar with it.
Search spam- a rather specific thing, but familiar to everyone. Have you ever had a situation where you enter a query into Yandex (Google), and the responses are entirely sites with some kind of bullshit that have nothing to do with the matter. These are so-called doorways (sites with automatically generated useless texts). They spam search engine results, but they make money from visitors visiting them (in different ways).

Those. all letters in your mailbox (or forum messages, blog comments, personal messages) of an advertising or other nature from a sender unknown to you - this is spam. True, the newsletters you have subscribed to can also be intrusive, but you can still unsubscribe from them (refuse to receive them further).

Spam itself is annoying and annoying, because it litters where it appears. Most often, this is your inbox, and it can be quite difficult to separate the wheat from the chaff when there are too many unwanted messages. But spam can also pose a real danger to both you and your computer. Let's figure this out.

Understanding the types of spam (harmless and dangerous)

From now on I will mainly talk about spam messages arriving by email, because it is this channel that is considered especially susceptible to this phenomenon. Everything else is not as neglected and is not so actively used by spammers, and this does not apply to all network users. But the problem of protecting them from unwanted messages is acute.

Types of harmless spam

Advertising of legal goods and services- in this case, the business owner simply chose spam mailings as one of the channels for attracting clients and customers, because it is not expensive, fast and brings results. Naturally, he doesn’t think much about the moral (or rather immoral) side of this matter.
Prohibited advertising— there are goods and services that are prohibited by law from advertising, and for them spam mailings can be the main channel for attracting customers. By the way, spammers also advertise their services through mass mailings, since this activity is prohibited by law. This also includes advertising that discredits competitors, since this is also prohibited by law (praise yourself, but don’t scold others).
Impact on public opinion— very often spam becomes a good choice for those who are trying to manipulate public opinion in the desired direction. It could be politics, but it could also be. Letters in general can be sent supposedly from some person in order to compromise him, change his opinion about him, or use his authority for profit. But this does not pose a danger to you personally.
Letters that ask to be forwarded to others- these can be varieties of so-called “letters of happiness” (send it to 10 friends and you will be happy), or asking to send information to friends for some other reason. Often such letters are used by spammers to collect or replenish an existing email database for subsequent mass mailings.

High-risk spam - what it could be

While regular (harmless) spam may only have a slight impact on your peace of mind and mental health, the examples below can be quite dangerous for your wallet or computer. And this is no joke.

I myself (the one who teaches and trains everyone) a couple of years ago “bought” a similar type of letter (phishing) and parted with several thousand rubles (read “”). I just got wrapped up and did everything “automatically” just to get behind, well, when I realized it, it was too late.

- a very effective method of deceiving not only gullible, but also simply busy or inattentive people (there is a hook for everyone). They send you a letter supposedly from your bank, electronic money service, or somewhere else. In this letter, you will definitely be taken aback by something (unsettled) and asked to log in to the site to solve the problem. You log in, but the site will be fake (although it looks exactly like the real one) and the data you provided will be immediately used to steal all your money.
Nigerian letters- you learn that you can get a large amount of money (various pretexts - from an unexpected inheritance to helping a prince in exile). You don’t believe it for a long time, but they convince you. When you believe it, you will be asked to transfer some money for “related expenses.” You translate and no one will bother you anymore.
Viruses, worms, Trojans— the letter may contain an attached file with a malicious program (or a link leading to a website with a virus). She can immediately cause problems with the operation of the computer, or she will sit quietly in a corner and carefully write down all the passwords, logins and other useful household things you enter. Worms, among other things, are also able to send themselves to your friends using the email addresses found in your contacts (as they will later call you...).

Spam protection

Where do spammers get databases with email addresses?

Spammers (those who send mass mailings) collect email addresses from all available sources. These can be forums, guest books, chats, social networks and other sites where postal addresses can be publicly available.
Hackers manage to get to some databases of addresses stored on websites.
Collecting Emails is carried out in most cases programmatically (with the help of search bots - harvesters) and this does not require much effort (only time, and not very much). Moreover, similar spam email databases You don’t have to collect them, but buy them from those who specialize in this matter ().
There are billions of postal addresses registered all over the world, and therefore you can simply try to generate Emails using special programs using appropriate dictionaries. With a high degree of probability, many of them will actually exist. Read below about how spammers check the reality of addresses.
There are special worms (viruses) that can send themselves to a database of addresses found on the victim’s computer. The database collected in this way will already be cleared of non-working mailboxes.

How do spammers clean databases of inactive email addresses?

Those who collect a database of addresses essentially don’t care who owns this or that address - they send letters to everyone, because there will still be someone who will respond to them (as they say - they hit the squares).

But still, in order to optimize costs and increase the return on mailings, it is beneficial for them to clear the databases of non-existent addresses. How do they do it? Let's see.

The simplest thing is to place a picture in the letter (maybe not even visible - one pixel in size), which will be loaded from the site owned by the spammer when the user opens the letter. If the picture is loaded, it means the letter was opened and the email is valid.
Many email clients (programs for working with email) automatically send a message that the letter has been read, which again plays into the hands of spammers.
The letter may contain a link urging you to go somewhere, promising mountains of gold. We've moved on - consider that your Email will now be marked as valid. The most unpleasant thing is that such a link can be disguised as an unsubscribe button, which will actually lead to the opposite effect.

How to reduce the likelihood of your email getting into the spam database?

In general, once your mailbox is “verified,” spammers won’t just leave you. It is important to understand that no one is immune from spam. But it is possible significantly reduce the likelihood of getting into such a spam database if you take the following precautions:

You can, of course, not publish your Email anywhere at all and not tell it to anyone. But in most cases this is difficult to do, so I advise except the main drawer have one or two minor ones that you will use to register on forums, etc. Often they can also come in handy, which can be obtained without registration at all.
Don't click on links in spam emails (even if there is an "Unsubscribe" button - it's a trap) and if possible, disable automatic downloading of images in the email client you use. There is a chance that your Email will be counted as inactive and mass mailings will not arrive at hundreds per day.
If you have not yet registered a mailbox or are planning to create a new one (for example, because the old one is completely clogged with spam), then do not proceed from the convenience and ease of remembering it, but on the contrary, make it longer and more complex. You will still send it to your friends electronically, but spam search programs are unlikely to guess it.

What to do if spam no longer lets you breathe?

These were all preventive measures to combat spam (or rather, reduce its quantity). But there is the possibility of an effective fight even in an already completely neglected situation. In this case, it becomes extremely important.

The fact is that in such large services as or, there are powerful antispam filters.

They place all suspicious emails in a separate Spam folder, thereby freeing the Inbox from junk. Yes, there is no perfect spam cutter, and whenever possible, before cleaning, it would be better to view the contents of the Spam folder diagonally to see if it contains legitimate correspondence. But it’s still much easier than digging through all this garbage all the time.

If you have a mailbox on another service, where the spam cutting is poor (for example, as in), then you shouldn’t despair. Get yourself an Email on Gmail or Yandex, and then set up mail forwarding to it from your old mailbox. Moreover, these settings can be made as in the old mailbox (i.e. set up forwarding - shown in the screenshot):

Also, in the new mailbox, you can configure the collection of mail from your existing Emails (the screenshot shows the settings for collecting mail in Gmail):

The same can be said about email client programs. Most of them also have a built-in spam cutter.

But in this case we should not forget that the mail service will have its own spam folder. this can be corrected in the settings of the service or client program).

Good luck to you! See you soon on the pages of the blog site