What is Spam?

Spam is mainly junk mail. It basically involves individuals or companies sending unwanted messages. Often these are unsolicited mails or advertisements, to a large number of recipients at the same time. This results in your mail box being flooded with unwanted messages. Your business should treat spam as a very serious security issue as it can also be used to deliver malicious software like Trojan horses, worms, viruses, spyware, and specific phishing attacks.

How can you spot Spam?

A lot of Spam messages do not actually include your email address in the TO: or CC: fields on the received email.

Some Spam may contain offensive language or images or even links to Web sites with inappropriate content.

Almost all spam has content that you would not generally be looking for on a day to day basis, however some spam can be derived from Adware and Tracking Cookies which may target the emails content to what you have recently been web searching for.

How can I avoid SPAM?

Initially a Spam filtering or Spam blocking software needs to be installed.

If you think you have an email which may be Spam, do not respond to it, just delete it.

Some Spam as mentioned earlier can contain malicious software so consider disabling the email’s preview pane and reading your email's in plain text.

Never click on URL links within Instant Messages unless you know the sender and are expecting the URL link. Reject all Instant Messages from persons who are not on your Buddy list

Keep software and security patches up to date - A lot of Spam is annoying but harmless (although it causes major network traffic), but some is also classed as malicious so 'updates' are the key.