How to Identify Spam Mails

While many experienced Internet users (and even inexperienced ones) are accustomed to seeing thousands of unread characters in their inboxes, some of us want to keep our mail organized. Even bombing with junk emails is never a pleasant experience.

The problem is that many spam letters actually contain viruses and other malicious content that should never be seen or opened. To avoid such things, you need to learn how to identify spam emails from regular letters sent to you by businesses and friends. Corporations dedicate important resources to fighting spammers, but no single user can rely on automation and vast resources. So what should you do?

Know your enemy

Spam is what we call all emails that are sent by businesses and scammers to reach a wider audience. While the majority of spam is harmless and will accumulate cybernetic dust in your spam folder, some posts are actually masked as well-intentioned messages. As the efforts of spam filters and email service providers improve, hackers and spammers have to come up with better and better ideas to break into private networks.

What can you do to identify a spam letter?

There are several important steps you should be aware of:

• Check the sender's email address. Real marketers use corporate servers to send messages. If the host part of the email address is phishing, consider moving the letter to the spam box immediately and get rid of it. Amazon employees will never use something like "jeff.bezoz@yahoo.com" to make it less reliable. They will use Amazon server instead.
• Never open archives attached to letters. Usually, email service providers check for virus files but do not open archives. If you see a .zip or .rar file attached, do not open it. Either scan it prematurely or reply back to the sender (if you think they are legitimate) and ask for a letter with the usual files attached.
• Never send back personal information. Your private data is the most important thing on the Internet. Never send proof of payment regardless of who asked you to do so.
• Never open applications. If an email has an extension (.exe), do not open it. In most cases, you will find nothing but a wonderful virus that will do something malicious or negatively affect the performance of your machine. Other file formats you should avoid.
• Use third-party apps designed to analyze characters and automatically remove spam characters from your inbox. There are programs like Advanced Identity Protector and Norton Anti-Virus that can help.

Note that none of the above options are 100% ways to identify a spam letter. Use them all to see if the letter is potentially harmful. In many scenarios, seeing the weird files attached to it and not recognizing the sender are some red flags that alert you.