I'm sick of spam

By the time an email reaches you, it has usually been filtered by your ISP, by Datasearch's antispam program and also by any anti-spam software you have on your computer. However, spammers are constantly revising their programs to get past these filters, so if your email address has found its way onto their lists -  you may still receive some spam. 

Tips for avoiding spam

1. Make sure your email address is not listed ANYWHERE on the web. To do this, go to Google (or your favourite search engine) and type your email address into the search box. If you get any results, your email address is displayed on the internet and can be automatically added to spam lists by robots trawling the internet.  You need to get your email address removed from every website that is listing it!

2. Set up an outlook rule to automatically put spam into your junk mail. If Datasearch hosts your email accounts, any email that has a high likelihood of being spam is marked in the subject line with the word 'SPAM'.  This allows you to create a rule in Outlook which tells your email program to put any email that arrives in your inbox with the word 'SPAM' in the subject line into a junk mail box.  Don't forget to check your junk mail periodically as real emails may also be marked as spam. Learn how to set up an Outlook rule.

3. Install anti-spam software on your computer. There are several commercially available client-side anti-spam programs that you can install which will filter your incoming emails. 

4. Turn on greylisting - bring out the big guns. If you are still receiving a lot of spam, you can request to have greylisting switched on in your email account. But beware! It is very effective, but can delay email and it is possible that a small percentage of legitimate email can also be filtered out.  You can read important information about greylisting here.

If all of this doesn't work, your last resort is to…

5. Abandon your email address. The best way to do this is to create a new account and inform each of your contacts that you will be changing your email address.  (Don't do this by autoresponder or you will also be notifying the spammers of a new address to spam!). You may also have business cards or promotional material that needs updating. After you have notified your legitimate contacts, you can then shut down the old email account. 

That'll stop the spam!