Spam e-mail on the rise: What you can do to help prevent it

Spam/junk email has been on the rise in the past few months. Spammers are even faking e-mail addresses to make it look like the e-mail is coming from yourself. It’s just another method they use to get you to open the spam.

Below are some tips on what you can do to reduce the amount of spam you receive in your Inbox.

• If you have a Charter (@charter.net) or other email address that doesn’t offer spam filtering, consider signing up for a free Gmail email address and have Gmail filter your email for spam.

• Don’t forward an email message to more than one recipient unless you use Bcc (Blind Carbon Copy). Addressing everybody as “To” or “Cc” exposes the email addresses of all the recipients to each other and potential viruses and spambots that may be on any of their computers. Exposing the email addresses in your address book to EVERYBODY ELSE in your address book, and potentially all their address books is also a privacy concern.

• If you get an email which urges you to forward it to everyone in your address book, stop and check the validity of the message on a website which checks internet rumors such as Snopes.com or TruthOrFiction.com Many emails that urge you to forward it are likely an attempt by spammers to collect legitimate email addresses from people who don’t know how to forward email correctly using Bcc.