About half of all the e-mail traffic worldwide consists of spam. Next to advertising, this often also involves attempts at spreading malware and phishing. To reduce this risk and spam received into your inbox generally, it helps to follow certain rules.
Protect yourself against spam mails by...
- being cautious of disclosing your e-mail addresses.
- using several graded e-mail addresses.
- not using any short e-mail addresses.
- Using spam filters in e-mail software, and those offered by the providers.
Phishing mails are one of the greatest threats to e-banking. Fraudsters employ these to try and obtain access to your account. To be able to send you such e-mails, fraudsters will have to find out your e-mail address first though.
You should therefore be cautious and careful when giving out your e-mail addresses, even if just generally to reduce the amount of spam you receive. Don’t disclose them just anywhere. Use different e-mail addresses, graded by importance or confidentiality depending on the partner with whom you communicate via this e-mail address.
Fraudsters often use software to simply try out all combinations of short addresses. Choosing a long e-mail address can offer a certain degree of protection.
Most e-mail software (e. g. Microsoft Outlook) includes functions enabling you to filter all e-mails received. Do use these (e. g. junk e-mail).
Mail providers also employ solutions meant to minimize spam problems. To do so, all e-mails received are analysed for certain criteria (e. g. subject line, return address, key words in the e-mail text, etc.) and classified as wanted or unwanted e-mails depending on the rules installed. Depending on your provider, you will have to activate the respective filter (or have it activated).
