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Change your password; save the world (from spam)

We get asked this question a lot: "Why do I get so much spam?" and there are a few explanations:

from: CloudIntel

1. your email address is listed on a public website: automated programs actively sweep the web for listed email addresses
2. you used your email address to sign up for a newsletter or website: many newsletters and websites may actually pass your email address on, or more commonly their databases are hacked. And it's not just small websites being hacked, it can be big guys too.
3. the email server used has been compromised: (explained at a very basic level) if someone spams from a hotmail address, then spam filters will see @hotmail.com as a spammer and block the domain. If someone uses their internet providers email server (such as bigpond.com) then they can also run into issues... this explanation is a little more detailed and won't be covered in this article
   
4. your email address is contained in someone else's contact list: if someone's email account gets hacked, a spammer will send from the hacked account to all listed contacts

 

How can you address these issues?

1. don't list your email address on any websites
2. use a non-work address to sign up for newsletters/websites/whatever online. Protect your work email address from everything possible.
3. use a professional email service - even if you've got your own domain name, make sure you're sending from a proper email server
4. this is where it gets tricky...

 

Really it's quite easy to keep your email account secure. Create a good password and change it on a regular basis (regular being 3-4 times a year). But whilst you're changing your password to protect your email, you're also doing it to protect your colleagues, friends and family's email accounts too.

 

You see, if your email account gets compromised (be it because you have a bad password or otherwise), the hacker gets access to known and real email accounts. And what's the easiest way to get around a spam filter? Send spam from known and "trusted" email accounts - it will almost certainly get through.

 

At a basic level, spam filters will review not only the content of an email address but will also know who trusted senders are. A lot of spam filters will actually automatically white-list (i.e. bypass the spam filter) email addresses that communicate on a regular basis. So if a spammer accesses an email account and sends email to the contacts in that email account, the spam will probably get through no problems - irrespective of the contents of the email.

 

So this is why changing your password on a regular basis (and choosing a good password) is fundamental to the security of not only your email identity, but also everyone your correspond with. You should make a business decision to have your passwords changed on a regular basis and to meet a minimum complexity level (create a good password).

 

And then you should tell everyone you know to take the same approach - because if their accounts get compromised, then that's your problem too! Once your email account gets put into a spam database you will no doubt see an increase in spam, but over time your email address could become poisoned - meaning that it could be on a blacklist, which nobody wants.

 

This method described above is the way that you will get spam, even if you've never advertised it to anyone. Business cards are another way that your email address can be compromised, but I'm not about to suggest that you stop handing them out! Do be careful, however, if someone adds you automatically to their newsletter list - request to be unsubscribe AND for your email address to be permanently deleted from their database. Unsubscribed email addresses are still kept in their databases to ensure they don't accidentally add you again - however if that database is compromised, you're still vulnerable.

 

Some of this is easy to do, some probably not so easy. You do hold a lot of responsibility with your contact list - probably more than you had originally thought, so it's a good idea to make some changes before it's too late.

 

Spam exists because unbelievably, spam works. (and it's on the rise)