Another reason is that there has been a change in the type of spam being delivered to a user’s email inbox. For example, the report cites that pornographic spam is not as prevalent as it used to be. Over the past three years, spam of this type has gone from 71 percent to 52 percent today.

One highlight I found interesting in the report is that Web users over the age of 50 are less likely to find spam as annoying as younger users. I don’t know if that’s because the older generation doesn’t use email as much as their younger counterparts or what, but I suppose they’ve left the worrying to those “whipper-snappers”.

The survey shows promise, too. People are smarter about spam than they were a few years ago:

• Users are making more use of the spam filters that are provided by their employers or they use filters of their own (up to 71 percent of users do this). So even though spam continues to rise, less of it is actually reaching the user’s eyes.
• Being able to recognize spam has increased.
• About 44 percent of Web users are better about not leaving spammers an easy way to get their email addresses.
• And less than 25 percent of users avoid the temptation of clicking on links in spam messages.

If you’d like to know more about how to see less spam in your inbox, I wrote an article that you’ll find beneficial: 4 Ways to Protect Your Email Inbox

[tags]spam,tips,productivity,survey,web,internet,reports[/tags]

Step 1 – Read a site’s privacy policy
Just because it says “privacy” doesn’t necessarily mean it’s about protecting yours. Specifically, it’s supposed to tell you how the site’s owner is going to use your information and how it won’t use it. So it’s conceivable that your email could be up for sale. If they don’t have a policy, be leery. But if they do and you don’t feel comfortable with it, you may wish to reconsider entering things like your email.

Step 2 – Don’t hand out your email to just anyone
Just because a site asks for all that information, doesn’t mean you need to give it to them. Let’s say you’re signing up for a newsletter to be emailed to you. The form asks for your name, mailing address, phone number, email address, etc. Are these pieces of information required? In some cases it may be perfectly understandable and therefore all right to give them what they ask for. Just be aware that you’re not obligated to give them what they want unless you choose to obligate yourself.

Step 3 – Setup a free email account
If you don’t already have one, get one. You have so many to choose from: Gmail, Yahoo Mail, MSN, etc. Most of the offerings you’ll find should have the ability to forward email to another account. (Places like Gmail have it for free, but others may consider it a premium offering.) Using another email account to act as a proxy is a great way to keep something between you and the sender. Just pay attention to which address you should be replying from.

Step 4 – Using a proxy email service
This is your best defense. Services like Sneakemail, GishPuppy, and spambox! allow you to create an email address on-the-fly and forwards emails to a specified account — the account, in this case, is the one you want to protect. Two things to remember here:

• For best results, create a new “temporary” address for each site you submit it to (more on this below).
• These services don’t store your emails, they just forward them on to a destination.

The neat thing about these services is that they allow you to control the expiration of the address it creates for you, anywhere from an hour to indefinitely, depending on which service you use. This is another reason why you should create one for each site you submit to because if you start receiving spam from a site you submitted your “temporary” address, you’ll know which one to expire on demand.

SiteAdvisor is a add-on to Internet Explorer or Firefox and appears as a small button in either browser. This button displays in green, yellow, or red colors to indicate safe, caution, or warning, respectively, depending on the site you visit and what information it has on it. You can select View Site Details from its menu to find out why it has rated a site as such.

When you perform a search on Google or Yahoo icons associated with each level of rating appear next to each of the search results. When you roll your mouse over these icons you get a summary of its rating with an option to view more details.

SiteAdvisor does not filter content nor is it a type of parental control software. Rather, it simply provides you with information on a site prior to you visiting it so you can decide for yourself if you want to visit it or not. If a site is a known contributor of spyware/phishing/spam/viruses, you’re probably better off avoiding that site and going somewhere else.

This is similar to what I reported on not too long ago about the online service known as Scandoo. It, too, runs checks on sites and informs why you should or should not be leary of a site before visiting it on search results.

There are three main differences you’ll find between these two defenders of the common Web surfer:

• The information in their rollovers (when you rollover their icons in search results) is displayed slightly different (no big deal).
• Scandoo is a search engine that you go to and SiteAdvisor is a tool you install in your browser, so it goes where you go.
• SiteAdvisor tells you what it knows about a site as you’re visiting it by virtue of its button in your browser by changing colors. More details for a site are always just a click away.

During my initial tests I noticed a considerable slowness to my Web surfing. I suspected that whatever sites I was visiting were being looked up on their servers, which is what should be happening. However, I’m not experiencing that same kind of slowness as of this writing. It could have been the time of day I was doing my tests — hard to tell.

Quick Overview

• Very useful tool that could help prevent the accidental download of viruses or spyware by informing you of the reputation a site has.
• May negatively impact speed of Web surfing (although my tests are not conclusive; just keep an eye on it).
• Provides useful information on sites you visit and does it dynamically as you surf.
• It does not block content and is not a filter — it’s just an informer.

The first rule is: don’t hand over your address willy-nilly. This may seem like a no-brainer, but you’d be surprised at the number times people just enter their address in the form on their screen without realizing this is how spam can start. Not that it happens every time, but it can happen under some circumstances.

Keep the one address you really feel strongly about (the one you want protected) for close friends or businesses that you can rely on. Give another address — one you don’t feel strongly attached to — to all other recipients. Free e-mail services abound, so you have no excuse to create at least one to serve as a stooge when registering for online services, or making purchases.

On that note, I have a few Gmail invitations that I can send to readers who are interested. It’s Google’s service that shook up the e-mail industry by offering 2 GB of space, e-mail forwarding, labels instead of folders, and more…all for free! Just send me a message using my contact form. Supply is limited.

The second rule is: use a disposable e-mail address. Services such as Gishpuppy, Sneakemail, and E4ward can forward e-mails sent to the address of your choosing. All are free, but the last two offer premium services with a few extra features if you’re interested.

These services work as proxies and only send messages to the address you tell them to. The next time you’re asked to enter an e-mail address, you click on their link to generate a new one. This is important: you’re creating a new, working e-mail address for each place you use it. This is good because you can have one for Site A, another for Site B, and so on. But you don’t have to logon to them to get your e-mails because they’re forwarded to the one you gave them.

The reason this is good is so that you can cut off the site who’s abusing the address you gave them. If they’re not honoring their policy of unsubscribing you at your request, then just log into your account and cancel that address.

Let’s say you’re registering for a site or making a purchase and you really don’t want to get stuck on another e-mail list. Just right-click and “Gish It!” to create a new address that’s tailored to the site you’re visiting. Now all e-mails from that site will be sent to the address of your choosing.

When you create the address you have the option of adding a few notes to it in a special comment box. Maybe you want to remember what exactly the site does or what you did while you were there. You can also select whether you want the address to expire, and if so, for how long.

So if you only want to use an e-mail address temporarily, or if the site you registered with is not making good on their promise to not send you spam, you can cancel that particular address and bye-bye spam!

GishPuppy is a free service and can be used with Internet Explorer and Firefox once you install a small plug-in.

What’s an e-mail harvester? It’s an automated program, or ‘bot’, that scouts the Internet in search of e-mail addresses. These addresses are then collected and sometimes sold or rented to spammers. You don’t want that!

Or maybe you’re using a P2P network to share files (in which case you shouldn’t, but I won’t tell ). That’s also a feast for bots.

Methods that I’ve seen used by forum-goers to avert this type of data collection is to spell out the e-mail address. For example, david43 [at] yahoo [dot] com. Even users with a little computer experience can figure that out, but bots can’t. It’s just a matter of time, I suspect, before they actually become that sophisticated though.

So before you open yourself up to spam (and I encourage you to educate your family members, too), check out the forum you’re on. Do they offer a method of contacting other members without exposing or even using e-mail addresses? Personal messaging is one method I’ve seen on forums. This way users have the benefit of communicating with one another in private, while keeping their personal information protected.

So keep your e-mail address safe!