Posted on January 19th, 2016 by David Taplin
Even though there are plenty of spam filters and tools on the market that look to identify, restrict and protect us against the sheer amount of email spam we receive, it has now become a serious problem that we all face on a day to day basis.
With so many types of email it is becoming increasingly difficult to distinguish the real emails from the spam emails, so here are the key categories you should be looking out for when trying to decipher them all.
Types of Spam
- Random Advertising
These make up a majority of unwanted emails and consist of advertising of some sort. They can be advertising anything from beauty products, holidays, sports equipment through to cars, gambling and electronics. - Disguised Messages
Disguised messages can be very misleading as they give the recipient the impression that they are either from someone they are not, contain messages that are deceiving or send the recipient through to websites that they are not intending to go to. - Phishing
Phishing is an email that attempts to acquire sensitive information (such as usernames, passwords or credit card details) often for malicious purposes, by masquerading as a trustworthy entity. - Scams
Scams are similar to phishing emails in that they attempt to get the recipient to part with something they may not be intending to, usually money or sensitive details of some sort. - Offers & Competitions
Unsolicited offers and competition emails draw users in by giving them the opportunity to win great prizes. Usually they amount to nothing other than your details being added to further email databases that end up increasing the amount of spam you get. So the moral is, leave these alone. - Viruses
These emails can be dangerous to your machine and its contents if encountered. They usually contain links or attachments that when clicked on it activates a virus of some sort. Sometimes they are difficult to spot as they will act like a phishing/scam or a disguised email.
The types of emails just mentioned, should not be confused with solicited emails and emails that may be inconvenient, but are not classified as spam. Here is a list of some types of emails in this category, that you may think are spam, but are actually not.
Types of emails that are NOT Spam
- Solicited Emails
Solicited emails are emails that you will have either signed up to or agreed to receive at some point. Sometimes you will have unwittingly ticked, not unticked or even got confused with a double negative statement and not opted out, however even though it may feel like it, this is not classified as spam. There should usually be a way to unsubscribe from these. - Email Newsletters
These are regular emails that you receive as a result of purposefully (or inadvertently) signing up to, or possibly purchasing products that have allowed the company in question to obtain your details for their mailing lists. - Social Media Notifications
There are very few people that now days do not have a social media account of some sort, and for those of you that do, you will be familiar with the constant notifications you will receive as a result. Unless you specify in settings the extent to which you wish to receive these notifications you will be bombarded with them, sometimes via text message but also via email. - App Notifications.
App notifications will also bombard you with constant emails telling you that your village is under attack, to rate them, to upgrade, to invite friends, the list really does go on. So ensure that you are clear what notifications if any, you wish to receive via email and tailor the settings accordingly. - Virus Guard Notifications
If you have a virus guard, firewall or any other software that looks to protect your device, you will usually, ironically, receive plenty of notifications and emails about the state of the software, what it is doing, what it has found, whether it’s out of date and so on. This is all fine, but please remember that this can be useful information and is ultimately not classed as spam.
We would love to hear about your experiences with email spam and unwanted messages that you seem to have received. Do you have trouble dealing with the continuous onslaught of spam or have you found a tool that has eliminated this issue.
If you would like to find out more about email solutions then please get in touch with My Hosting Bubble.
