These are three different topics but very similar to each other. They all related to email. I discuss each one separately to best understand them all.

Scams

These are emails you receive from people trying to steal your money in most cases. They want your money! eBay scams is very common. These people are also known as scammers and they send out fake emails pretending to be from eBay.

There are many different type of scams we will not go in detail. The advantage is the fact that with certain type of knowledge you can identify any scam and any real email. I explain how you identify scams (eBay or any type of scam) Reading these to memory will help you remember them easily and you figure the next scam email you receive instantly!

These are four signs that give a 99.9% probability the email is a scam.

1 Scammers do not welcome you by name as long as it is not some of your friends or loved ones. Usually scam emails start with something like: Dear Sir, Hello, Hi, Dear member, Hi friend, Dear loved one.

2 They do not have an opt out link. This is a link that allows you to easily unsubscribe from the list. This must be a link not something like:

Reply to be removed from our list

Sometimes real newsletters have a little title above this link that says: To unsubscribe click this link.

3 They are totally unknown to you. Sometimes a scammer sends you an email and make it sound very friendly. However these same people have stole your email. If you don’t know the person who send you an email no matter how polite or patient he/she looks they are scammers

4 Lottery related emails or winning notifications. Do not try to contact them to check out if they are scams. That way you may make things worse.

Your in box is filled with crap everyday. Not all emails you receive should be treated as if they are from people that know you. It is not that way unfortunately. You need to delete emails you do not know who is the sender if you want to stay safe. Do not try to check who he is. Judge from his email or name only.

Aside that clicking links inside emails can be dangerous. They may have viruses.

Even if you notice just one warning sign you should take safety steps. If you are not totally sure if it is fake keep in mind these tips:

If it is an email from eBay. Visit your eBay account by opening your browsers (Internet explorer or whatever you use) and visit eBay.

Type in http://www.eBay.com

Never click on links inside your email messages if you are not 100% sure email is safe.

Never reply to the email, phone, fax or mail them if you are not 100% sure email is safe. Don’t do it not even to test if it is a scam. Use other methods to test like the examples below:

Whatever messages you receive by email eBay will also store them inside your eBay account. If the email you received inside your inbox is not in your eBay account it is a scam.

If it is an email from paypal or a bank to the above steps again if you have an account with them. If not that it is obvious it is a scam.

Some scams are very easy to identify like lottery scams. If you never played before the Australian lottery how come you won?

Now you also need the best email client to send and receive emails. I suggest Gmail.com after testing Yahoo Mail, Hot mail, Mail up, Ad post and got feedback from a lot of people.

Gmail.com shows the best protection against spams, scams and bad email. It moves all spam to the spam folder and it is the most accurate.

Important information for people buying or selling on eBay.

1 You should never pay using money transfer services such as Western Union. Read articles on eBay Website directly from the Western Union Team and MoneyGram International.

You should also check out other important eBay articles if you are new to eBay. Even if you already purchased before it is safe to read the tips from eBay at the Help Center.

So try to remember the four signs so when you receive an email you instantly know if it is a fake or real email. Use a Gmail account instead of Yahoo Mail, Hot mail, Ad post and all the others. Test results show it is the best against fake emails and has all the other features others have as well.

Karl Sultana sells popular software NoAdware. Articles related to Internet security are updated regularly on his blog. Download NoAdware to remove adware and malware today.

Have you found that when you’re uptight about something, tired, hungry and stressed, that you tend, ever so slightly, to overreact sometimes? I received a nasty e mail the other day accusing me of spamming this person (who had subscribed / opted in to my ezine, by the way). Obviously, he was having a bad day and had lost perspective on spam. I sent him a note which I thought I’d share with you, just so we can maintain perspective in this busy day and age.

First of all, I receive over 360 spam e mails a day. That’s the price one pays for a strong Internet presence, I guess. I don’t use a spam filter as it has cost me money in the past by blocking important e mails. (Spam filters have no brains, you see; they’re simply robots.) Here’s the thing – it takes me a total of 12 minutes to delete the spam, but I save hours every day using the Internet and e mail. TWELVE MINUTES. Let’s see that in perspective. How long do you wait for your food in a restaurant? How much time do you spend commuting? I don’t spend hours attacking the spammers - I simply hit “Delete” and move on.

Also, there are different types of spam – helpful, uplifting information and valuable offers on the one hand, and sleazy porn and scammers on the other. Either way, it takes two seconds to delete. So, when one looks at the real time usage compared to the benefits, why do people react so violently to what they perceive as spam? Why the threats and why take so much MORE time to write to the “spammer”, instead of taking two seconds to delete the e mail? Is there perhaps something else going on here?

There’s the rub! The REAL reason, I suspect, why people get so angry at certain “spam” e mails, is that their buttons are being pushed. Something in that e mail reminds them about something about themselves that they’re not happy about. They look in the mirror, don’t like what they see, and smash the mirror. “You can break the scales, but you’ll still be fat.” They shoot the messenger when the message is a little too close to the truth. Instead of standing back and asking themselves, “Why am I reacting so violently? Is there a message here for me? What can I learn from this?” they attack. Anger often comes from fear. Perhaps we should start reading some of those really irritating e-mails.

There’s a radio station here that spouts the worst kind of socialism, anti-establishment collectivism and everything that is directly opposed to my philosophy. And I LOVE listening to it. I learn so much. It gives me perspective, corrects some of my assumptions and strengthens others. There are some very smart people on that show – much smarter than me! Perhaps we should be less threatened and more open minded about spam and look at the upside of this amazing, time-saving thing called e-mail.

About Robin J. Elliott

For more than 19 years, Robin J. Elliott has worked with thousands of businesses in over 49 industries across the United States, Canada, and Africa. He specializes in helping small business entrepreneurs build wealth and gain access to new markets and profit centers through Joint Ventures. Through his Joint venture Seminars across North America he has thought thousands how to create increasing, multiple streams of income without cost or risk and very little time.

Get Robin J. Elliott’s FREE: “How To Grow Serious Wealth Using Joint Ventures” Mini-Course, and The Prophet of Profit e-Zine along with video blogs, world class articles, free video, and access to top Joint Venture Partners at http://www.jvwisdom.com

One huge advantage of email marketing is that it is free. But one major disadvantage is spam. Would spam be so popular if it were not so cheap? I do not think so.

There are some simple steps that you can take to help reduce the number of messages that get blocked by spam filters. Of course, this may result in more people actually getting your email messages, thus making your marketing efforts more profitable.

1. Word selection. The words you use in an email are analyzed by spam filters. There are many obvious spam trigger words that you should avoid while remembering to keep your messages as professional as possible.

2. Formatting. Just keep it simple. Avoid using different fonts, sizes, images, colors. Keep it clean and stick to normal size fonts while avoiding large fonts which will flag your message as spam.

3. Be consistent. If you send out a newsletter then make sure to use a template. This will help to brand your newsletter and also will enable your readers to pick out your newsletter and not report it as spam.

4. Use double opt in. When someone subscribes to your newsletter or list they will then be sent an email with a link that they must click on for confirmation. This actually can help you build a valid mailing list since some people may accidentally enter a wrong address.

5. Unsubscribe. You should always include a way for your readers to unsubscribe.

6. Contact information. Display your contact information in every email you send out so your potential customers can contact you and so that you conform to spam laws in the US.

7. Test. One of easiest ways to avoid spam filters is by testing. Send your newsletters to different email accounts and see if they end up in the junk folder. If they do, then you have some work to do.

8. If you are sending out a newsletter use marketing software or a service that allows you to send out both an HTML and text only version of your newsletter. There are many email clients that only accept text only messages.

9. Avoid using to many caps in the subject line and make sure you do not have to many blank lines in your message.

By using the above techniques you could keep your newsletters and messages out of the spam folders while building your mailing list and thus benefiting from the time spent actually getting your email messages to your recipients.

One way that providers are using to combat spam is through the use of volume filters. This may seem like an easy way to fight spam, but it could be a big problem for affiliate marketers.

What is an average volume of email? This varies from provider to provider, but depending on the amount of email you send an hour then you may not know whether your email has ever arrived at its intended destination.

Once your provider sets a volume per sender, anything over that gets set aside. There are ways around these volume filters, but they are mostly illegal.

When a volume filter blocks your email, there is no way to know that it happened. Most of the time the email is not bounced back, and you think it went through - but there is just no way to know for sure.

What can you do?

- The obvious solution is to send fewer emails. If you have a big list then find out who really is opening your emails and remove the people who are not. Most marketers get 10 percent open rates, so that means 90 percent of your list may be ignoring your messages.

- Separate your list into smaller groups. You could have one list for prospects, one for buyers and one for multiple buyers.

- Make sure your list does not contain addresses from only one provider. It should contain different providers or you will increase your chances of your email getting blocked.

- Put your own free email addresses, such as Hotmail or Yahoo on your email list and then verify that your message got through or if they are filtered.

Just like search engine positioning, getting your messages to your recipients and having them opened is a game that can change monthly. Successful email marketers learn to adapt and be vigilant.

Be aware of the impact these filter are having on your efforts. Think of it as part of the normal process of online marketing.

Having a targeted email list can be much more valuable then a list of 10 million useless names.

In the end, less can be more and this will make your email marketing better and more profitable.

Copyright 2007 by Joe Rispoli

Joe Rispoli has been gathering free advertising resources online for over 10 years. They can be found at his website href="http://www.ucanto.com">UcanTo.com. You can also subscribe to his href="http://www.ucanto.com/subscribe.html">Free Advertising Resources Ezine which includes Free Email Marketing Software with subscription.

Spam affects literally everyone who uses the Internet these days. Wether it’s a free Yahoo email account or paid account from an ISP, a spammer more than likely will find you if they haven’t already. What to do about spam has been highly debated and a huge market exists to block spammers.

Anti-spam software has been utilized by millions to combat the irrelevant and sometimes crude advertising that fills their business and personal inboxes. The big problem with anti-spam software and email accounts is that many emails, some which you may be expecting can get put into the blocked folders unintentionally. This can create a huge hassle for many people and browsing through a spam folder can be even more difficult when you have 500 messages. You more than likely end up deleting more than a few non-spam messages, some that are important.

The best and most wise step to combating spam is to do your best to not end up on a list where spammers may find you. Follow some of these tips and you may find spam no longer is a word that relates to your everyday life.

1.) Carefully read all online forms you fill out. Many forms have opt-in buttons prechecked for approval of emailed offers from their partners. You want to make sure you uncheck those boxes. Unless you know all their partners, you probably don’t want loads of offers and rebates from companies you don’t know.

2.) When filling out forms make sure you look for a disclaimer stating that your email will be kept confidential and not sold. Many companies sell their email information to people who in turn sometimes resell email names down the line to shadier companies until lists are available to anyone. Anyone includes spammers.

3.) Money making offers online, beware! If the offer to make money from home is vague there’s a good chance your email will be handed to a database of 100 or more people looking to recruit for their MLM. This can end you up with tons of money making opportunities and yes, the quality of offers will deteriorate and eventually expect viagra and porn offers a year from now. Make sure you know the money making opportunity before giving your email, otherwise expect the worst.

All in all, common sense is more than likely going to be your best weapon against spam. Don’t put your email in the hands of just anyone. Treat your email as you would your own child.

This article was written by Aaron Siegel of TopSavings.Net which offers Internet provider deals to residential and business customers.

Everyday, millions of spam artists send out billions of spam emails to people who would rather not receive even one of these - sometimes x-rated - messages, let alone a dozen (or more) everyday of the week.
When left alone, these unwanted messages get in the way of legitimate and important messages from your family and friends and they can quickly fill up a box with limited space. And we all know it is time-consuming to delete them day after day.

There are things that you can do and precautions you can take that will help to cut your unwanted emails down to a trickle.

These steps can greatly reduce the amount of emails that you have to go through to get to the good stuff.

http://www.NecessaryInfo.info Information For Your Life

All computer users that access the internet should be using a spyware removal tool. If you don’t know why then keep reading.

Spyware can have many names including adware, malware, trackware, and snoopware but for most internet users it is not the names they are familiar with but the symptoms of a spyware software infection.

Being infected by spyware software means that your computer will be performing very sluggishly, you will have an increased amount of pop up ads appearing, you homepage may change unexpectedly, and you might also find that you get strange search results whilst browsing the internet.

Make no mistake about it, spyware is a nuisance, and the only thing that will help to keep it from your computer is installing and using a spyware removal tool.

Spyware software left undetected on your computer can have disastrous effects. Once of the greatest threats is identity theft. This may seem a little severe but spyware software can include keyloggers that will capture all your keystrokes including passwords, personal information, and even bank details. So you see a spyware removal tool really is essential.

Spyware Facts You Should Know

Did you know that nine out of ten computers that are connected to the internet become infected with spyware software? When a spyware blocker is installed, 88% of scans will reveal some form of spyware or adware. Spyware does not just come from adult orientated websites; in fact your computer can be infected no matter what your surfing habits.

As you can see installing a spyware blocker really is essential especially if you want to protect your information. Spyware will not go away and you need to stay protected. A spyware removal tool can help you do just this and there are a wide range of free spyware downloads available. Install a spyware blocker now or else turn off your computer.

Find more about Spyware Removal on http://www.LeanderNet.com/Spyware_removal/Spyware_removal.php . More useful content on LeanderNet - http://www.LeanderNet.com

The benefits of spam blockers are immense. They not only save your time, energy and space, but also prevents your PC from getting infected with viruses, phishing, and crashing down of the whole system. Take a look at the various spam blockers and their effective role in giving you a spam free inbox.

In order to realize the benefits of spam blockers, it is best to first know the possible dangers and difficulties that you can face due to spam and junk mails. You must be constantly irritated by these junk mails. But, there are many other reasons to avoid junk mails filtering into your inbox other than just posing as an obstruction to your eye. There are people who can make the spam look as though it is being sent from your own personal computer. This is known as spoofed email address. Once such a thing occurs, your ISP will cut your internet connection, even without your knowledge. You computer system can be effectively slowed down or it can be crashed due to the impact of viruses that comes with spam. This can lead to all your private information being stolen and to being directed to adult sites. They not only steal all your information, but also delete all that you have stored in your PC. The spam blockers are anti spam software, the uses anti spam programs to prevent the occurrence of these incidents by preventing unsolicited mails from entering your inbox.

Spam Blockers-A Protective Shield for your Computer

Another benefit of using spam blocker is it prevents phishing. Phishing is when you get these junk mails that are dressed as official mails like the bank mails. They ask you to enter your pin code and password to view information or to view the attractive deals. In this process, they collect all your information and utilize it. Spam also occupies a lot of memory space on your computer. They may also contain scams that trick people with attractive money offers. Here comes the importance of spam blockers. The spam blockers prevent the messages from entering your inbox. This saves not only the space, but also the other potential threats and damages.

Some of the effective spam blockers and filters include Spam Bully, Spam Inspector, and Zaep. A portable spam filtering solution, SpamArrest makes it easier for you to check for spam even when you don’t have access to your computer. It makes use of a webmail along with a spam filtering solution. If you are using Outlook, then Qurb is the best option. Anti spam for outlook includes Spam Bully that keeps your inbox free of spam. Even the SpamPal identifies the well known spammers with the help of spam blacklists. For POP accounts, Death2Spam is extremely effective. MailWasher Pro is secure and a time-saving spam filter that also protect your computer from viruses. Make use of the full benefits of these well known spam blockers and email spam filters to make your computer safe and protected from viruses and spam.

Find more about Spam Blocker on http://www.LeanderNet.com/Spam_blocker/Spam_blockers.php . More useful content on LeanderNet - http://www.LeanderNet.com

One of the most important things for a website which hopes to provide good quality support is to be readily contactable and the best way of doing this has been to provide a support email address. Unfortunately, such addresses are easily harvested by spam robots, who’s task is simply to trawl the internet looking for ‘naked’ or poorly concealed email addresses and adding them to the spammers lists.

Traditional tricks to combat this included replacing the ‘@’ with an ‘at’, hiding the email address amongst meaningless HTML like this so it would display on the page but be all but unreadable in the code, or replacing the periods with the word ‘dot’. The first and third tricks are also used by spammers to hide web addresses from filters in their e-mails, and the second trick is actually learned from spammers who want to hide words marked heavily by Bayesian filters. In the eternal battle between spammers and the good guys, these types of tactics are continually developed and then integrated into spammers robots and while they still offer some protection, it only makes it slightly harder for spammers to get your address, not impossible.

There are however alternatives, enabling you to offer good customer service without opening yourselves up to massive spamming.

1. Use Live Support - A live support module is appreciated by users because they can get an answer right on the spot. If you can afford the staff to man it then it is well worth it for this reason alone. The anti-spam implications are also clear, as the robot needs it’s own built in spammer to annoy the support staff, and while these do exist, they are practically unused because they simply don’t offer a good return.

2. Use a lead in question before supplying an address. This is a simple tactic using good ASP or PHP programming which asks the user a simple question - such as who they want to contact or what they need help with and then follows up with either a mail form, a faq, a contact address or a combination of these things. When well programmed the spammer needs to make custom code in their robot to get past it - in other words it is more trouble than getting the email address manually.

3. Use an image - or better yet a series of images. Software that recognises images does exist and is used, but again it is nowhere near as prevalent as software that reads text and generally is more trouble than it is worth for a spammer.

4. Use a telephone number. One thing people like is actually knowing that a person is dealing with their enquiry. There is still no better way of doing this than offering telephone support. Toll free numbers are best, but even VoIP calling or a regular number will work as a means of contact.

Regardless of the method you use to offer your customer support, the most important thing to remember is that your customer wants a response and wants to know their problem is being worked on. It’s possible to design a very elaborate system to stop spammers getting through to you, but if you stop your customers getting through to you then you’ve rather defeated the purpose.

With an estimated 70-90 billion spam messages sent every day, the problem is not going away. Don’t wait for someone to solve the problem for you, visit The Stop Spam Now Site and review the very best methods of stopping spam.

If you are as sick and tired of spam showing up in your email and don’t want to spend a lot of dollars or do the programming for anti-spam programs, here are 4 easy and free suggestions to nearly eliminate the problem.

1. Never use just your first name, if it is common, for a moniker. Using mary@ or mark@ is like low hanging fruit to a spammer. They will mine for domains and then just pound them for the common names and see which ones don’t bounce. If they get through, grab your shorts because they will not stop, ever. They’ll even sell their success list to other spammers and the pile will then grow.

Solution: Hide your moniker using things like mary2945@ or mark9054@. They will never get to you or figure it out unless you post it where you shouldn’t. I simply us my first and last initial.

2. You go to numerous Web sites and use your email address for newsletters or information. They may or may not sell those address to others. If they do, you are dead meat. If you are unsure, there is a simple free way to get what you want without the risk.

Solution: Use www.spammotel.com. It is simple and free. You set up a log-in and put in your real email address. Use the service to generate a pseudo address moniker which will be something like 1Ak34982 @ spammotel.com. Any email sent to that pseudo address will be forwarded to you. If you want to cut it off, just go back to spammotel.com and eliminate the address and you have kept your real email address intact and protected.

3. If you have a business or personnel Web site with a contact form, your web designer may have placed a file like contact.php or contact.asp to do the processing of the request to forward it to you. Spam robots search for those files and then read the email addresses inside. Then guess what they do?

Solution: Contact your Web designer and ask them to change the name to something less obvious like 2957.php or np48ut.asp. It doesn’t matter what it is named as long as it is properly named in your online form. Otherwise, they mine it and your day goes real bad.

4. Do you have your email address displayed on your Web site somewhere? If so, you you might as well also send a registered letter to your favorite spammers and invite them to dinner. So how can you have your email on the site and not get spammed?

Solution: Disguise your emails with java script code. I have three simple methods that really work. Here is one that is “cut and paste”.

Input the following code for making a visible link to your email on a Web page. It can be seen only with your physical eyes and is clickable for sending email. Stupid spiders can’t read it:

Just replace “username” and “yourdomain.com” with what you use and presto! There are other variations you can use for even hiding them from being read by the eyes, yet clickable or showing to your eyes only and not clickable. Your Web designer should know how to do this. If not, show them the above code. If you are already being spammed it is only left for you to bury the address and create a new one. There is no other way.

Spending money on anti-spam programs will help but if you start with the above you may just be able to spend that money on a nice dinner a your favorite bistro.

John Clark is the President of Wow Web Works in Kalamazoo, MI. He is a Web Design, Marketing and SEO professional with a growing company. For obvious reasons his email address will not be shown here but you can contact him at http://www.wowwebworks.com Much more information and many more marketing ideas are available at his blog, http://www.wowwebworks.com/blog

Last year I came across a poster on Yahoo! Answers asking for advice on a strange e-mail she received. According to this poster she received a reply from someone on an e-mail she never sent. She immediately thought that the spammer hacked her e-mail account, sent an e-mail to himself and then replied to it. This is not impossible, but there are easier ways to do this, without hacking an e-mail account.

E-mails are plain text documents and can be modified and manipulated with a simple text editor like Notepad. The spammer simply saves any e-mail to a file, opens it with Notepad and puts your e-mail address in the “From” field. The spammer then imports it into an e-mail client and replies to this manipulated e-mail. This is only one of many ways to manipulate an e-mail message.

Spammers normally use a technique called hash busting. Hash busting is when you add random text at the beginning or at the end of an e-mail. The text makes no sense and consists of excerpts from books, articles and news bulletins. This text randomises the size, as well as the contents of the e-mail, making it hard for spam filters to find a pattern in the e-mail to base its filtering decisions on. For instance, an e-mail consisting of an image only will normally be flagged as spam, but if someone adds random text below the image, it changes the pattern of the e-mail and the spam filter can no longer use the criteria mentioned earlier to label the e-mail as spam. There are legitimate e-mails like this and the spam filter needs additional training to know which e-mails with embedded images, containing text below the image, are spam and which ones are not.

Some spammers realised that people became suspicious of the senseless text in spam e-mails, so they started to hide the text by making the colour of the text the same as the background colour. Other spammers make the size of the text so small that it appears like a horizontal line between paragraphs or at the bottom of the e-mail. The techniques used to conceal the hash buster text are easily detectable by a good spam filter because no decent person will send someone else an e-mail with hidden text or text that cannot be seen with the naked eye. So the spammers fail more often to get their e-mails through the spam filters when they use cloaking techniques like this.

Spammers needed a way to make the hash buster text look legitimate to the user as well as the spam filter. This is when they came up with the idea of pretending to reply to an e-mail message that was never really sent to them in the first place. The spammer creates the forged e-mail with hash buster text and then replies to it. The spammer still enjoys the benefits of the hash buster text coupled with a better chance to get past any spam filter, because the e-mail appears like a legitimate reply to a previous e-mail sent by the victim. A reply to an e-mail you sent to someone else is seldom unwanted and the spam filter will therefore be less suspicious about it, unless it contains specific keywords and phrases that trigger the spam filter.

But there are more consequences for the victim than just a spam filter not being able to filter the e-mail as spam. Spammers can include anything in these fake e-mails. They can even pretend that you enquired about one of their products. Instead of spamming you with an unwanted e-mail, they pretend to send you a reply to your initial enquiry, an enquiry you never sent. Abuse departments can easily use this as an excuse not to take action against the spammer. They may argue that the spam victim did not receive an unwanted commercial e-mail, because the victim enquired about something and the accused simply replied to that enquiry. Luckily abuse departments need to prove that the original e-mail was really sent before rejecting the complaint, but we all know that very few abuse departments actually take any spam reports serious these days.

It is because of the lack of proper legislation and poor implementation and enforcement of existing legislation that we have to deal with waves of spam every day. We are constantly one step behind cyber criminals and our current spam filters cannot keep up with all the tricks and techniques used by spammers to force their junk down our throats. There is a widespread appeal for better filtering and alternative communication methods. There is merit in developing better spam filters, but how do you replace a communication medium like e-mail without disrupting individuals and businesses that depend on it every day to stay in contact with friends, family and clients? What’s the use of taking away a communication medium if you do not take action against the individuals who abuse it? It will only be a matter of time before spammers start to abuse the system replacing e-mail. You need to take action against the root of the problem and not the infrastructure through which the problem occurs.

About the Author
Coenraad is webmaster and founder of Cyber Top Cops, leaders in Internet security, prevention of online fraud and educating users about online scams and malicious software. Visit Cyber Top Cops Articles: The Latest In Cyber Security for more articles related to cyber security.