Most of us get spam trying to sell us things, most commonly prescriptions, cheap mortgage rates, online gambling and other, more “adult” topics. Most of us just delete them or hit the “spam” button and move on. There are some other types of spam that are a little more serious, however.

One well-known example, circulating for years now, is the Nigerian bank scam. The sender, allegedly the wife or relative of a former dictator or government official (usually in Nigeria, hence the name) tells the sad story of how millions were deposited in a bank account which is no longer accessible. In exchange for your help, they’re willing to share this wealth – for a few mere thousands from your bank account for ‘expenses’. As ludicrous as it seems, people fall for this every year. In one well-publicized case an elderly Czech man who had lost his life savings to this scam shot the Nigerian consul in Prague.

Some Internet scams offer investment opportunities with huge paybacks. They usually claim to be risk-free, but once they have your money, you’re very unlikely to see any return. Another common scam involves offering credit cards for those with bad credit ratings – just send a security deposit and processing fees. In return you get – that’s right – nothing. And by the time you start to investigate, the scam artist has disappeared.

These scams can also effect legitimate businesses you might be dealing with. Because there is so much spam these days, the email services are working hard to filter it out. These filters can sometimes stop legitimate messages, however, and you may not receive something you wanted.

How To Avoid Getting Scammed

Never reply to spam. Doing so simply indicates to the spammer that your e-mail address is valid, and you’ll receive more spam than before. Some spam contains a message offering to remove your e-mail address from their mailing list. Don’t use even this service – it’s nothing but another method for verifying e-mail addresses.

Above all, never give your credit card number, bank account details or private data to anyone unknown over the Internet. PayPal, for example, and other legitimate online businesses will never ask for your password in an email. One common scam is to fake return addresses and tailor subject lines and content so the message appears to be from them or another financial institution ‘confirming’ your information. Don’t fall for them.

How do you know whether it’s spam? Since, one man’s spam is sometimes another’s welcomed advertisement, there’s no perfect answer. But there is one good rule of thumb: if you don’t recognize the sender, it’s probably not someone you want to hear from. After all, how many former dictators in Nigeria are you likely to know?

If you use e-mail at all, chances are you receive spam messages from time to time, probably more often than you realize. Most e-mail providers filter spam and send it to a “junk mail” folder where it is never seen or accessed. Many e-mail boxes receive hundreds of spam messages each day. Spamming is the process of sending bulk electronic messages to multiple e-mail addresses in hopes that a small percentage of recipients will read the message.

Spam is not limited to e-mail, although that is what it is most often associated with, but rather is used through various electronic mediums. Spam has not always been a part of the Internet, but it’s interesting to take a look at spam’s beginnings.

The popular belief is that this junk e-mail was called “spam” because of a Monty Python sketch produced in 1970, long before electronic spam was in existence. The sketch portrayed a cafe where everything on the menu was some variation of Spam, the canned meat. In the background, patrons sing a loud song about Spam, drowning out the restaurant staff’s attempt to speak to customers, thus “Spamming” the conversation. Unsolicited, junk e-mail became known as spam because it made it difficult to filter through and retrieve the messages that were solicited and welcomed by the recipient.

In 1998, the dictionary added the following definition to the word spam: “Irrelevant or inappropriate messages sent on the Internet to a large number of newsgroups or users.” Before spam was being sent to e-mail boxes however, it was being used in other ways on the Internet. The first known unsolicited electronic message sent for commercial purposes was in 1978. Throughout the 1980’s, before e-mail was so popular and widespread, spammers annoyed users of message boards and chat rooms by flooding the conversations with commercial messages. The flooding of message boards and chat rooms was called “flooding” or “trashing” before it became known as “spamming.”

Unsolicited electronic messages are not unique to the Internet. In the 19th century, unsolicited junk telegrams were sent regularly. Today, spam can be in the form of unsolicited instant messages, junk text messages sent to multiple wireless phones, or even pre-recorded messages left on voice mail systems.

When unsolicited junk e-mail became known as spam, the maker of the canned meat, Hormel, brought legal action to prevent these unwanted messages being called Spam. Eventually, Hormel came around, insisting only that when publishers are referring to the canned meat as opposed to the junk mail, they use all capital letters.

Today, there are over 12.4 million spam e-mails sent every day. It is estimated that over 40% of all the e-mail sent over the Internet is spam. The average person receives 2200 spam messages every year. Although spam is a tremendous waste of space and time, it continues to be used because it works. Over 8% of Internet users have bought a product directly because of a spam message. Avoiding spam is nearly impossible, but e-mail providers today are doing an increasingly better job of keeping it separate from legitimate electronic messages.

If you have an e-mail address, there’s a good chance that you are already familiar with spam. As of 2006, over 40% of the e-mail sent on the Internet was unsolicited, junk e-mail intended for commercial purposes, better known as spam. The average person receives over 100 spam e-mail messages every day. E-mail service providers have done a good job at figuring out how to filter spam out of inboxes and send it to a junk mail folder, but even with incoming messages being screened and filtered, spam continues to be a nuisance to most people.

Although it may be impossible to avoid spam entirely, there are several things that e-mail users can do to reduce incoming spam, including:

Control your E-mail address

The more frequently an internet user enters or posts an e-mail address online, the greater the chance of spammers adding that e-mail address to their list. Avoid posting an e-mail address on a message board. Many people create a disposable e-mail address, one that they use when they need to enter an address to sign up for something online. Their personal e-mail address, or the main address that they prefer to use, is given only to people and businesses that are known and invited to use the address.

Watch out for check boxes

As our world becomes more electronic, we are often asked to register in order to use certain websites that we need access to. Quite often, the registration process includes questions regarding the registrant’s desire to receiving related offers via e-mail. In most cases, these check boxes are already checked for you, and you need to un-check the boxes to avoid being barraged with junk e-mail. Much of the spam that is received in e-mail boxes is invited because of these check boxes.

Disguise your E-mail address

There are times when users have to post their e-mail address in a place that could be seen by other web users. One way to avoid attracting spammers is to disguise the posted address. For example, instead of posting your actual e-mail address of joeblow@hotmail.com, you would post “joeblow AT hotmail DOT com.” Programs that scan web pages for e-mail addresses will not detect this disguised address. It’s also a good idea to search online for your e-mail address. Typing your actual e-mail address into Google will tell you whether or not it can be found in public places online.

Read Privacy Policies

Many of the websites that Internet users register for have terms and conditions that most people never read. Within these terms and conditions, there is a privacy policy that should state ways that your information will be kept confidential. If you are not satisfied with the measures being taken to protect your information, you should not register at the site.

There are several other tricks and tips to avoid spam e-mail, but taking the above steps will be a good start. If spam is a problem for you, consider starting over with a new e-mail address and practicing the above habits.

Google seems to have tweaked their spam filters a bit in the last few days. I’ve noticed several messages that shouldn’t be tagged as spam going into the spam folder, a problem that I haven’t had on Gmail for quite a while.

As a matter of fact, I don’t even check it that often because of how good Google’s filtering has been. I just happened to give it a scan yesterday and found several messages that shouldn’t have been there.

Some clown recently started selling a program that lets people spam your Gmail accounts quite easily so that might have something to do with it. Google may be tightening up a little to filter out the added crap that produced.

Google’s spam filter “learns” as you tag messages as spam or not spam so it should improve again once you’ve marked the messages you want as not spam a few times.

And that actually brings up a good point about using spam filters. Whether you’re using Gmail, Hotmail, Outlook or some other email system, you should always use the buttons they offer to tag spam that gets through the filter as spam, as well as the button to tag messages that were tagged as spam incorrectly as being good.

As you do this, almost all email software filters will improve their filtering based on what you’re tagging. If you just delete the spam from your inbox, it doesn’t help improve the filter and those messages will continue to be missed.

In any case, if you’re using Gmail make sure you give your spam folder a good look for anything that got sent there by mistake. There’s nothing worse than missing an important email because it was marked as spam.

Phishing is a common email scam where criminals send emails that appear to be from a legitimate source, such as your bank or Paypal, trying to get you to give up your username and password.

The message usually says something like “We have detected an attempted fraud using your account. Please log in and confirm that your account has not been affected.”

There will be a link in the message that appears to take you to the website for your bank, Paypal, eBay, etc. where you would normally log in.

The catch is that the web page is fake and if you enter your login information, it goes straight to the scammer – who then has access to your account.

In some cases, there might even be a login form right in the email itself.

There are a couple of simple ways to identify these scams.

First, none of these websites will send you an email with a login form right in the message itself. They will sometimes include a link to their website, but in many cases they don’t even do that. If you get an email with a login form in the message, delete it and DO NOT enter your information there.

Second, if you point at the link in an email message for a couple of seconds, most email programs will show you the actual page it goes to.

If the email appears to be from Paypal for example, the link should start with http://www.paypal.com/

If it’s something like http://22.293.21.92/cgi-bin/paypal.com it’s a fake. There shouldn’t be anything between http:// and www.paypal.com.

The safest way to deal with these messages is not to click on the links at all. If you’re concerned it could be a legitimate email, just go to your web browser and go to the website directly.

If there is really something up with your account, you’ll get a message about it after you log in.

How much spam do you receive in your inbox every day?

10 messages? 50 messages? More?

Personally, I get well over 100 spam emails every day. My anti-spam filter gets most of them out of my inbox, but at some point during the day I need to scan the spam mailbox in case it flagged a message by mistake.

And then there’s the free email accounts I use. I’ve got a Gmail account and a Hotmail account that I use for things I don’t want in my main email.

I don’t check them as often, but I still need to scan the spam folder once in a while to make sure something didn’t go there by mistake.

Imagine how much time gets wasted by people around the world who have to deal with this junk every day.

What could be done with that time if it wasn’t spent dealing with email?

Something needs to be done to get rid of this problem and I don’t think it’s going to change until someone comes up with an entirely new system for sending and receiving email.

Today is Black Friday – historically the real start of the Christmas shopping season. Over the next month or so, you’re going to be inundated with advertising for all the wonderful toys, gadgets and other things that you Just Can’t Live Without.

And spammers know it. They ramp up their “advertising” as well at this time of year. It’s easy for the people who receive their email to get fooled and click through since it’s just one more email among the throngs of ads from legitimate websites and advertisers.

Don’t let your guard down. In fact, you need to be even more watchful of what you’re clicking on in your email at this time of year.

Don’t open unknown attachments. Don’t click through to banks, Paypal or other websites from messages claiming your account is in danger of being shut down. All the usual warning apply.

You can find out how to protect yourself effectively from these scams and a number of other online security threats with my Online Security Toolkit.