Lock-down On Spam

Giacom LOCK-DOWN ON ZSPAM? TOP 5 WAYS YOU MAKE YOURSELF VULNERABLE YOUR DOMAIN.COM ADVERTISING Everybody wants to advertise, right? YOUR AD HERE What you may not realise however, is that giving out your email address by advertising will increase the chances of it entering the public domain. Once your email is out in the open, you will become a target. Spam - 30.6 percent of emails we see are spam emails - the indiscriminate sending of unsolicited bulk messages, particularly advertising. REGISTRATION If you register for conferences, offers, mailing lists and memberships, the chances are that those lists will be APPLY NOW sold off to e-commerce agents. Once your email starts spreading this way, it will continue to be sold and re-sold. Malware distribution - a recent buck in trend has shown a decrease in levels of malware in emails, but an increase in malicious websites. Take care as to which websites you add your details to. LAX SECURITY If your PC and network is poorly protected from intrusion and you maintain lax security protocols, malware and other malicious tools can be used to harvest your contact list for spamming purposes. One in 377.4 emails are identified as a phishing email - these can be from contacts claiming to be popular social web sites, auction sites, online payment processors or IT administrators. SOCIAL MEDIA Whilst you may want your friends and family to see your email address on social media networks, you must be aware that by posting this information you are at risk of your email being harvested electronically from your personal page by spammers. These will then be sold on to other spammers. 61% of malicious web sites are genuine sites that have been compromised. SOCIAL ENGINEERING Spammers find seemingly legitimate ways to get you to give out your email address by offering you free products, gifts or access to business information. They then sell on the emails they harvest to other spammers. One in 277.8 emails contain malware - this intrusive software can disrupt computer operation, gather sensitive information, or gain access to private computer systems. Giacom use commercially available, enterprise level spam and virus scanning engines to filter out any unwanted content from our Hosted Exchange email service. However, this does not serve as a 100% guarentee that you will not receive spam or that your security is certain. It is always advisable to ensure that you run proper client and network-side AV and malware protection. The more security layers the better - we will never beat it, but together we will most certainly try so BLOCK SPAM AND CARRY ON ! Giacom For more information, visit www.giacom.com