There Is Illegal Material Coming Directly To Your Inbox

Yes, it is true. SPAM. Did you know that spam is illegal? You know that it is annoying, but spamming is actually an illegal act. And worse yet, the majority of the products offered in Spam advertising are also illegal. There are also offers that are just plain fraud.

I'm sure that you have seen one of the messages from a foreign bank or the personal assistant of some high level official from another country. The message offers you a portion of funds that the sender cannot access directly, they ask that you send your bank account details and they will transfer the money to you. In actuality, your bank account gets emptied. Do not ever send your banking information to anyone that you do not know. If you receive an email that appears to be from your bank or credit card company, but sure to verify its legitimacy with a phone call to the company. Most banks and credit card companies will never contact you via email, looking for your account details.

Regardless of where the Spam originates from, whether it is in the United States, Asia or another country, the items and services offered are generally the same. One half of the Spam sent is in the categories of health related items, adult content, computer and IT products and services, education, or personal finance.

Two newer categories are political related spam, as you may have seen in the 2008 political season, and offers citing spam solutions are becoming a trend. Some of the anti-spam solutions include some sort of download, in many cases the product downloaded is an application that can turn your computer/IP address into a spam server. Never download software or an application from an unknown source and keep your virus software up to date. If you use a web based email service, such as gmail, yahoo, hotmail, or aol, they offer spam reporting services, you can simply click a button or select a check box to report an unsolicited email as spam. These companies submit their spam lists to a single spam database that can be used by all email companies, so they can setup filters on their system to try to block spam before it reaches your inbox. You may also be allowed the ability to blacklist or block emails from a specific email address or domain. Just be careful that you do not accidently block an email that you actually want to receive.

The official definition of spam states that any unsolicited email of any sort is Spam and this is very much correct. It is important to know that there are different levels of Spam and some forms of it can be very dangerous, either for your computer, your livelihood or both.