How Your eMail Address Book Can Get You on Spammers' Lists

By Maurice Clarke

How can your email address book can get you on spammers lists?

In your email client you will have an address book for regular or favourite contacts.

Although you can opt to ADD people you REPLY TO automatically it is wise to set this feature OFF and either

Be prompted to add new contacts you reply to into your address book OR Turn the feature OFF and add only when you decide to without any prompting Lurking dangers

Suppose you email a large number of contacts from your address book using the TO or CC (carbon copy) feature so that ALL recipients can see the emails of those you email. You may be forwarding a message you received which you feel could interest others.

Your contacts when the receive such an email from you can, by clicking REPLY ALL email all these contacts, or their emails captured for later use.

When emailing several contacts from your address book ALWAYS use BCC (blind carbon copy) this was each recipient does not know who or how many others were mailed with the same message.

Some devious virus software can be dropped onto your PC (without your knowledge or consent) which results in your address book emails are either emailed with spam messages or the emails off loaded and added to spammers lists. Anti-Virus software which is UP-TO-DATE should capture such attempts to steal your address book, but many users still have no or too little protection, or failed to keep virus definitions up-to-date.

Recommended Anti-Virus software includes

http://www.symantec.com Norton Anti-Virus

http://www.mcafee.com Mcafee Anti-Virus

http://www.grisoft.com AVG Anti-Virus

Typically anti-virus will automatically scan email both RECEIVED and SENT by you.

It is also recommended you run a WEEKLY full system scan to check for any viruses which have evaded the scanning system.

Most products also include or offer as as extra ADWARE scanning which stops emails and web sites feeding you ads or web site links.

Whilst you may adopt good practices one or more of your address book contacts may be lax in their email security management. It would be useful to email this page to them, which you can BCC to your address book contacts.