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How Are These Companies Getting My Email Address?
A company can give your email address to an affiliate of theirs when you give it out, but that is not the only way that a company can get your email address. These days, companies are getting smarter in their efforts to attain email addresses. Here are some of the ways that companies are getting a hold on your inbox.
Personal Homepages
Just about everyone has a homepage of their own these days. Almost every internet service provider (ISP) offers you a place to put up your own website. The problem behind this is that when you do put up your website, you often feel obligated to leave your contact information.
This is not a very good idea if you are looking to avoid spam because you have just advertised your email address. A resourceful person will take down your information so that they can spam you later.
It is rare that anybody thinks that they can receive spam simply from putting out their contact information, but it is the easiest way to do it. Spammers can easily gather all of your information by using what is called Harvesting Software.
Harvesting software is basically a program that searches the internet for the @ symbol. In searching for it, they recognize that this is likely an email address and therefore it leaves you open to receive their spam. Most of the time, spammers are unaware if the email address is even active or used at all. That is why they can put out so many of them.
By harvesting as many of the addresses that use the @ symbol, spammers are basically guessing that at least 50,000 emails they send out of 1,000,000 of them will be viable. In most cases, regular people like you prove them right by responding to them.
Once you reply to one of the spam that you receive, you have announced to them that they can continue to send you email. You should know that they will often report your email address to other companies and their affiliates which will only lead to your receiving even more spam.
Registration Forms
Whenever you are interested in signing up for a service online, you would serve yourself better not to leave your email address unless you are certain that you want to receive news and product announcements from that company.
Nearly all registration forms that you fill out can lead to spam. That is why these companies ask you to fill out registration forms. Some companies leave you with the option of receiving emails and notices from them. You should always read the fine print of a registration form before you submit it.
There is usually a box that you can check if you do not wish to receive emails from the company or its affiliates. If you do not wish to receive them, you should be certain to check that box. If that box doesnt exist, then you may want to forget the registration all together, just to be sure.
Of course, it is common for some companies to place the option on receiving emails or not and still send you emails. That is why you should always check the privacy policy of the company first. It is the law that all companies let you know whether or not they share your information with others. It is also common for people to ignore the privacy policy information.
That is why you should always read through it.
It does take some extra time on your part to go through these policies, but you can save yourself the effort of having to go through and delete spam, which is more annoying. By not going through the privacy policy, you are playing roulette with your inbox.
This registration spam also applies when you are registering a new piece of software. After you have installed the software, there is often the task of registering. Many of the companies tell you that registering it is so that you can be informed of any product upgrades for that software. But you should know that they are also used to send you every other notice about their company as well. If you dont want to receive this type of information, you have to refuse the registration process.
Cookies and Temporary Internet Files
Spammers use a software program called spiders to access and harvest your email address. These spiders basically just wander around the internet and into active browsers searching for your email information. To be more specific, they are looking for the @ symbol so that they can attach themselves to email addresses.
These spiders are very intelligent, but not intelligent enough to know the difference between a legitimate email address and a simulated address. They grab everything and harvest the information to their own database. They can also sometimes grab information from your browser that is not an active or viable email address. These come in the form of cookies and temporary internet files.
If you dont know what cookies and temporary internet files are, they are they are the record that your computer takes of your online surfing. It is how your computer is able to bring up recently typed in information and quick launching any sites that you want to revisit.
The reason the spiders harvest your cookies and temporary internet files is because the cookies are saved in a manner that resembles an email address. Cookies look like this: MBrown@anywhere.com they usually take on the registered name that the computer is registered to and doesnt leave a websites name.
You could gather up to 50 cookies a day depending on how many websites that you visit during the day. Since the spiders dont know the difference between real email addresses and cookies, you would do better to clean out your cookies and temporary internet files at least twice a week; more if you surf a lot. Here is how to do it from windows.
You can begin by double clicking programs, then accessories, then system tools, and then click disk clean up. Click okay when that box comes in and you can delete your old files and cookies. You can also remove your cookies and temporary internet files by:
Right clicking start, click settings, then control panel. Go into your internet options icon. In there you can follow the instructions for you to clean up your computer by deleting both cookies and temporary internet files.
It is a relatively easy thing to do once you get used to it. In doing this, you are getting rid of the extra files on your computer that these spiders are looking for. It is just an extra precaution that is good to take.
Contest Entries
An alluring way for companies to get your email information is to post contests for things that you would have an interest in winning. Of course in order to enter, you must provide your email information so that they can notify you if you win.
What they dont tell you is that you are also leaving yourself open to spam from them. Most people know that this is the plan, and many think that this is worth it, but if you dont, you should think twice before signing on the line.
This also applies to gift offers and subscriptions. It can be a real bother to go through all of the effort it takes to sign yourself up for a contest that has been set up specifically to harvest your email address.
Before signing on for any contest, you should always check the company that is offering it. Some of these contests are legitimate, and some of them are set up specifically to get your email address. Its a really tricky business. The prize may not always be worth the amount of spam you receive.
Remembered Email Information
A common practice among the more sophisticated spam artists, is to get a good grip on those internet users that have a habit of saving their sign in information to their email addresses. It is very rare, but some people do have the knowledge to pick up your login information.
If you can avoid it, you should try not to save your information like that. It might save you seconds from putting in all of your information manually, but it also leaves you vulnerable to getting snooped.
You have to understand that some spammers get together with hackers and then you have a real problem. That is when their spam can be dangerous to your computer. When spammers do this, they can sometimes be detrimental to your computers health to even open the email because it could be an automatic virus that is in your inbox instead of just an annoying ad.
Public Posting
When signing up for one of the many free email addresses that are out there, many people decides to add themselves to the public profile list that the email provider offers. Generally, you leave your basic information and screen name. However, what you rarely notice is that you also leave your contact information as well.
Someone that has little else to do with their time can easily search through public profiles and get your email address at will. The common user will take this information in order to have a chat with someone that shares their interest, but a person that wishes to send you spam can also contact you whenever they want.
In general, you will want to avoid filling out any forms that require you to give out personal information like that. You should always read the companys privacy policy as well. I know they can be a bit long winded, but true spammers want it that way because they depend on your not reading it. This is how they sneak in the fact that they plan on sharing your information with other companies, if in fact they do. |
