Hello everyone! Today I'll be talking about the behind scenes of spam mails! Everyone in the entire world definitely has a common thing and that's an email account. Not considering the fact of people who aren't able to afford it or due to any other circumstances. Whatever it is, it brings me to the point that everyone's mail account is bound to face the problem of spam mails and now I'll move further into the topics.
WHAT IS SPAM MAIL?
Spam mails are mainly to advertise on their products which are most likely not credible, or advertise about how to get rich quickly or about their services. These advertising spam mails usually purposely join some mailing lists and get the addresses from there onwards obtain our addresses from other places by searching for it. They will then start spam mailing these advertisments to people like us!
THE DANGERS OF SPAM MAILS!
Sometimes, these spam mails may contain viruses or Trojans which gets on the receivers' nerves due to the fact that these viruses may cause the computer to work on its own due to the file which is attached to the e-mail message. As found in my research, some files can be run automatically and the fact that you do not know what is in the file, the computer is prone to suffer from the virus. This is why it is important for us to think twice before opening the email
Some email headings may interest us and thus we should always use check its credibility with the use of the anti-virus software which has the latest virus databases. But many people still ignore the danger that come from these viruses without knowing the fact that these viruses may also cause their personal information to be leaked out.
Below is an advertisement made by wintoons.com that shows the importance of anti-viruses software in a cartoonist-ic manner. (It isn't a real software!)
BENEFITS OF SPAM (POINT OF VIEW FROM SPAMMERS)
Has anyone ever thought of why these spammers are constantly advertising about their products and etc? From my research, I thought about it thoroughly and felt that it was in fact very true and that's how we really react to these advertisments. It's the same with the advertisements shown on TV. Everyone knows that advertisements in TVs are a waste of time to watch thus they basically change the channel (what I would normally do) or do their own stuff while waiting for the show to continue. These advertisements will have an impact on the viewers through the repetitions where we will immediately think of that product when we really need them. Similarly, one may receive the same spam mail/advertisement whenever he/she checks their email. Having seen it repeatedly, they may just click it one day.
WHAT CAN BE DONE TO PREVENT SPAM MAILS!
Always use their spam filter! There are two types but the ones that people are using would be the client spam filters which I believe everyone who's reading this post is using too. It's a filter that separates our spammed mails and directs it into our junk mail! I think it's actually quite interesting that the computer is able to be made in a way that it recognises what is a junk mail and what is a proper mail!
Below is a video of how to avoid spam email. If I'm not wrong, their system applies a little to their country's email system. It provides tips on how we can avoid these problems such as unsubscribe to their links and not reply and also check on the privacy policy etc.
I think it's actually interesting to actually know how does spam mails come about and it's good to know what we can do to prevent these annoying problems that we may face which comes from these spam mails! I think I actually learnt quite a lot from these researches and videos.
So, how do you feel when receiving tons of spam mails and do you actually click on these spam mails when you're actually attracted to it's heading/title? If you did, did your computer suffered from some technical difficulties?
Reference:
About Spams
Filters!
Threat!
Benefits
Video 1
Video 2
I usually receive spam mails but I will never click it, otherwise viruses will be injected into my computer, these virise may automatically send my files online.
ReplyDeletethank you for the post, really liked it. my friends always say that they received spam mails from me, however i had never send them before. it may be due to the spam mail i had open. so nowadays i will just delete it without opening it. this is to prevent virus attacks.
ReplyDeleteI find spam mails extremely annoying, but i mean, if you know it's spam, why click on it? So for me, it goes straight into the trash bin. Personally, i haven't had a virus to my laptop, but my friend once received a virus through a spam e-mail and it caused some troubles to her documents. Some of her documents were even automatically e-mailed to various people on her list. Spam is not cool.
ReplyDeletei think to not be a victim, you should never click on any emails from unfamiliar email addresses. That's the basic rule. Also we should regularly clear our inbox of this spam mails. That way they can never succeed in getting any information out of us of using our emails to auto forward stuff to others in our contact list.
ReplyDeletei feel quite irritated to clear my mails so many times a day because of spam mails and advertisements. i won't click he advertisements for the fear that it may lead to some explicit site or worst contain link to a virus.even if the title or the heading is interesting i would still delete it straight away without giving a second look at it.
ReplyDeletenorine.
i always click on mails which i do not know who the send is, but usually the email provider will block the content unless i click allow content. Thanks for the info! i think in future i wont click any mails from unknown sender anymore
ReplyDeleteQuite an informative piece on spam, and the video was useful for pointing out how we could protect ourselves from spam.
ReplyDeleteTrue, spam mail is so annoying, but I must say that the spam writers have some pretty persuasive titles for their emails that you are very tempted to open them!
As pointed out, we need to be careful with spam mail as they could be carrying trojans and viruses.
Are there examples of spam mails that you received that you could show us, eg screenshots, in case some readers out there may not be able to differentiate between what is spam or not.
Hi Velda!
ReplyDeleteNice post.
I think all of us are not spared from spam mails. They can be pretty annoying especially if the same ones keep appearing in your inbox. I have been receiving a spam email from Canada's bank about my account. I have admit I clicked open the first time cause I was curious. But luckily, nothing bad happened. Although I stopped opening any emails that have been directed to my junk and emails from unknown senders.
Spam, while annoying as hell, really is rather harmless. Generally, not opening any emails with suspicious titles or from unknown senders will keep you safe. Otherwise, even if you do open the email, there usually is another link you have to open before the virus attacks your computer. If by then one hasn't already realised that its spam, then maybe one does deserve to have his computer attacked by viruses lol.
ReplyDeleteLike any other activity online, be cautious and ignore weird links. Then, spam shouldn't pose that big of a problem.
It is indeed very annoying when tons of spam e-mails are flooding my inbox frequently. Besides spam e-mails, it is also very annoying to receive tons of advertising e-mails.
ReplyDeleteDue to curiousity, I do click on the spam e-mails in the past but now, I just delete them directly.
hello! thanks for sharing. yes i agree spam mails is very irritating, but i have a question, how do they know our emails and send all the spam mails to us?
ReplyDeleteto be honest, i dun even read any spam e-mail because i really scared my computer will get virus. even though every sems i will reformat my computer to prevent it from having any virus.
ReplyDeleteI think for company to make a promotion, i think they should just ads on those popular social network website like facebook to attach people to look at it for more information.
I believe with all this filtering e-mail, no one will bother to read the junk mail as they know it may consist of virus.
I hate spam mails, I believe most of us finds it irritating and annoying. Usually if I happen to receive any mail which is "weird" or from some contacts that I do not know, I plainly just ignore and deleted it. I didn't even bother to open and read the content. I'm not sure if my computer has any technical problems after opening spam mails, I'm not really aware though. But whatever it is, I think even if these spam mails are harmless, I feel that those mails are meaningless anyway, for people like me.
ReplyDeleteSpam mails are a bunch of useless irritating mails. I have no idea how they know my address. Very clever of them. I usually delete and then transfer them to the junk mail so they wouldn't appear on my inbox ever again.
ReplyDeleteYeah i agree with those who post and say that spam mails are irritating. people can buy our emails from those contest/lucky draw forms that we fill up to "win" if we are chosen. There are companies who collect and store our information after the contests and sell them to companies that want them. maybe that answered your views on how they got your emails?
ReplyDeletei do get spam emails often but it doesn't really bother me, as i made my settings to only receive emails from my contacts. if i need any account confirmation, i just find them in the junk mail box. maybe that what people who are getting irritated and annoyed by spam emails should do to prevent those emails from getting into the inbox.
ReplyDeleteI have received a couple of spam mails before but I do not open them, because they are spam mails. I just delete them immediately since I do not recognise their names, email addresses and what they want to tell me. So I think that spam mails do not really bother me because I just delete them off all together.
ReplyDeleteFor some reason I get spam mails everyday, such that I don't really bother deleting my junk mail section anymore. I've never opened a spam mail before, but these spam mail senders are getting smarter; posing as google or microsoft.
ReplyDeleteI do hate to get spam mails but I dont get overly bothered by it these much because my e-mail filters them out automatically. Most of the time they are easy to get rid off by just clicking the delete button. It is important to know what is spam and what is not so that we don't click the wrong thing and get led to any undesirable sites
ReplyDeleteHey everybody!
ReplyDeleteFrom these comments, I guess everyone has experienced the constant annoyance of spam mails but nevertheless, everyone deleted them once they receive it!
It's true that it's annoying but all of us have to know that it's the person's job to send all of us these advertisments and etc where even they themselves hate spam mails. Thus, I think we should be forgiving unless they send us spam mails with VIRUSES!