How you can prevent spam

Spam is a daily headache for most people who use the Internet. These emails usually contain links or attached files that can potentially infect your computer, laptop or cellphone with malware, spyware or viruses. It is important to understand the best ways to prevent spam in the first place and also know not to respond directly back to these spammers as that will just confirm your email address is a valid email address.

6 steps to follow to limit spam:

1: Confirm the email is a spam message. If it is not from someone who you recognise, if they claim you have won a large sum of money, if its to good to be true are good examples.

2: Stop posting your e-mail address on a public forum or website. It is estimated that 95% of all junk e-mail is caused by a person publicly disclosing his or her e-mail address. There are many robots and scripts that automatically scan websites for e-mail addresses.

3: Only use and submit your email address to trusted/ reputable websites that do not sell your email address to 3rd parties or advertisers.

4: Block spam using MyDot, you can easily blacklist email addresses using this method.

5: Install spam blocking tools for your specific mail client, some examples are:

Spam Aid

Spam Reader

6: Report spam to Imaginet using abuse at imaginet dot co dot za.