Spamming has developed into a global plague. Unwanted, unsolicited emails comprises more than half my inbox. What does this do for the global economy? it is clear that productivity is negatively impacted, and with spam filters having to be progressively more stringent, we often find legitimate emails being discarded as junk. The bandwidth strain that spam contributes further distorts economic factors – businesses are having to buy excessive amounts of bandwidth in order to cope with spam.
ISPA recently accounced its war on spam. Taking a lead in the international fight on spam, ISPA has disclosed its plans to introduce an online Wall of Shame that will regularly be updated to list known South African spammers.
Spam presents more direct risks to individuals than simply wasting time & money, specically the risk of being defrauded. It amazes me how many ignorant users still exist (sorry Mom!) that actually believe that:
- they’ve won a lottery they never entered
- someone in Nigeria will release $ 10,000,000 if they pay the admin fee of $5,000 (419 scams)
- HSBC has $ 300,000 in a account in their name, and simply require all of their personal details
- forwarding an email to 10 people will save a life
Come on guys! Preventing spam starts with a few simple guidelines, but it takes everyone’s cooperation:
- when you receive email from someone you don’t know that is offering you something, it is usually spam;
- an email that encourages you to forward itself to other people is usually spam;
- an email that solicits any form of personal information from you is usually spam;
- an email with a hyperlink to a known institution that is different to that institutions’ website is usually masquarading (e.g.: if ABSA sends you an email prompting you to enter details on their website, the website should be https://www.absa.co.za/…. NOT something different like http://193.45.3.1/absa…)
Be a part of the cure – stop forwarding emails form unknown recipients!
by Sean Riley
Entelligence Blog 