Spam
Spam is an unsolicited electronic message, usually an advertisement, which is sent by an unknown sender to a large number of Internet users.
It is often a medium for fraud, hoaxes, viruses, documents with offensive content and malwares.
Caution
The main nuisances associated with spam are:
- Flooding of your inbox
- Needless time spent downloading and deleting emails
- Inappropriate, erroneous content (hoax) or fraudulent
A fraudster may also:
- Send worms, Trojan horses, spywares or viruses to your computer
- Defraud you out of money by using methods such as phishing
How can you protect yourself?
To avoid receiving spam:
- Use a disposable email address:
- created by a disposable email address service
- created by yourself if your provider offers the management of temporary email addresses
- Do not sign up on websites that sell their lists. If necessary, consult the privacy policy of the website in question
- Do not enter your email address on blogs or forums, or, if you do so, use an address that is different from your regular email address
- Block spam using software or filtering services
To prevent problems if you receive spam:
- If possible, avoid displaying spam messages by deactivating the automatic message display in your email client
- To avoid automatically downloading malwares, configure your email account to display emails as plain text
- Do not click on links contained in the message
- Do not reply to spam
- Do not purchase any of the advertised products or services
- Do not try to unsubscribe to spammers’ lists
References
- The Internet and spam – Service Québec
- Spam – Stop Spam Here
- Spam IQ Test – Industry Canada
- Spamming – Safe Canada
- Other websites about spam
