"the word-of-mouth survival guide for SAN FRANCISCO parents"
Normal
0
false
false
false
EN-US
X-NONE
X-NONE
MicrosoftInternetExplorer4
/* Style Definitions */
table.MsoNormalTable
{mso-style-name:"Table Normal";
mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0;
mso-tstyle-colband-size:0;
mso-style-noshow:yes;
mso-style-priority:99;
mso-style-qformat:yes;
mso-style-parent:"";
mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt;
mso-para-margin:0in;
mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt;
mso-pagination:widow-orphan;
font-size:11.0pt;
font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif";
mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri;
mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin;
mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman";
mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast;
mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri;
mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin;
mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman";
mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;}
Spam
is not delicious. Yet, we all eat
it. Every day.
When
you make an online purchase, sign up for a newsletter or buy something on eBay,
your email is up for grabs. Vendors may
sell your email address or use it for their other companies to solicit your
business. At the very least, they will
send you a monthly email with some great deal they have -- or some extremely
helpful newsletter. Spammers could also be trolling chat sites to gather
addresses. Hence, spam. So what's the solution?
Get a 2nd, free email
address with say, Yahoo or Hotmail or Google, for all of your online
purchases. (If your main email address
is with Yahoo or Hotmail or Google, just get another one.) Then, keep your main email private,
SACRED. NEVER purchase anything online
with your main email address. Don’t even
sign a petition! Use your secondary
email for that. Most of your spam will
now go to the secondary email. And since
you never give out that email address to anyone you care about, you can just delete
all of your emails at that secondary address en masse. Nice.
A few other things to
think about: don’t respond to spam.
Don’t YELL, don’t even ask nicely to be taken off their list. Even if they say, “to unsubscribe, press
reply and type ‘remove’ in the subject line” – unless you know and trust the
company. Otherwise, they will know that
they have reached an active email address and they will send you more. If you have spam notification software, check
it off as spam and then delete. Even
better: delete spam before you open it – sometimes opening spam can trigger an
alert to the spammer that your email address is active. (Insidious, eh?)
USE the spam filters! Most email programs like
Outlook, Outlook Express and Entourage have them. They allow you to set
different levels of protection: the highest level being that you will only
allow mail from those already in your address book. Yahoo and Hotmail and
Google also have spam filters in place. If you’re really not kidding
around, you could buy a spam blocker like SpamArrest. It’s super easy to use, keeps the junk emails
away and if you’re still interested, you could look at your daily spam, if you
really wanted to. But just know, spam is
not good for you.
Too Much Spam? Wired Mom- Stores, Restaurants, Services, Products, Activities, Events