Reducing Spam

Most email spam is commercial advertising, often for dubious products or get-rich-quick schemes.  It clogs up your inbox, uses up your monthly download allowance and can also hide viruses that infect your computer.

Being careful who you give your email address to in the first place is a good way to help reduce the spam you receive. Installing and activating up-to-date security software including spam filters will help reduce what actually gets through to you. Knowing how to recognise and deal with the spam that does get through will help ensure you don't get conned or make the problem worse.

One other excellent way you can reduce spam is by using Google’s Gmail system.  Even if you don’t currently have a gmail address, you can set your email host to forward mail to a gmail account you create, then download your email from gmail into your normal email program. Gmails spam filters are superb, catching 95% of spam and hardly any of your real mail is ever flagged as spam accidently.  Using this method in conjunction with a decent security program with spam filtering on your PC will catch just about all spam you are sent.