Avoiding Spam & Spim

Unwanted Emails & Instant Messages (IM's)

Two of the more unusual words associated with computers "spam" and "spim" refer to the problem of unwanted emails and instant messages, respectively. Like the junk mail that the postman pushes through your letterbox most mornings, spam and spim are worthless pieces of information that you have not asked to receive, and can be very difficult to completely get rid of them. That's why most email services and programs now feature spam filtering techniques that will weed out the unsolicited messages before they ever arrive in your inbox.

Where Does It All Come From?

Well, strictly speaking, it's hard to say – the people that send out spam hide their tracks so as to avoid being shut down by law enforcement agencies. But generally speaking, spam is essentially unwanted email -- though you should be aware that when you sign up to use a website or register a piece of software, you might have agreed to accept emails from the site or software in question.

Basically though, spam is email that you've not agreed to receive. The senders – spammers – usually get their hands on your email address by buying a list of addresses from someone else. This someone else may have collected your email address in a legitimate manner but it could be that when they sell it on, they actually have little or no say in where it eventually ends up.

What Is Spim?

Spam isn't a new problem, but spim is, and represents spammers' ongoing efforts to get their messages in front of your eyes. Instead of bombarding your email address they send unwanted messages to your instant messenger ID. Still a relatively minor problem, the spim differs little in terms of content to spam, which pushes everything from stock tips to discount pharmaceuticals.

SPIM can also take the form of Phishing, this is an industry-wide issue, and one that Yahoo! takes very seriously, while Phishing, to fraudulently obtain personal information, is not a new tactic, we have not seen widespread proliferation of this in Messenger.

There are ways to protect yourself against phishing, click here to find out how.

Dealing With Spam

The best way of dealing with spam is to use a spam filter. By labelling any spam you receive in your inbox the filter can learn what to look for and identify future spam, redirecting it to a separate junk mail folder. Whatever you do, you should be cautious about clicking on any of the links in the email, even if it's to unsubscribe.

Unless the email's come from a trustworthy company, by clicking on a link you're doing two things: one, confirming that your email address is active and being used, meaning you'll likely get even more spam, and two, potentially opening yourself to a virus if you're redirected to a malicious website.

You can also reduce the amount of spam you have to deal with by creating separate email accounts; one you can use for work/personal use and another when you're registering on a website or a program. This will leave a 'good' email address for personal correspondence and a 'dirty' address that can be used for all other spam-attracting tasks and that won't matter when it gets inundated with junk.