What Is Spam and How Do I Reduce It?

Spam is the electronic version of "junk mail," or unsolicited, indiscriminately sent bulk email. Spam is a side effect of having an email account. Most spam is generated either for indiscriminate marketing, or for criminal or fraudulent schemes such as identity theft.

How can you reduce the spam in your inbox?

There are some steps you can take to significantly reduce the amount of spam you receive:

• Don't give your email address out arbitrarily - It is common for mailing lists to be sold or shared between companies. If an email address isn't required, simply don't share it.
• Check privacy policies - Before submitting your email address online, look for a privacy policy. Most reputable sites will have a link to their privacy policy from any form where you're asked to submit personal data. Read this policy before submitting your email address or any other personal information to know what the owner of the site plans to do with it.
• Be aware of default options - Online forms often have default options to receive emails about other products and services. If you don't want to receive regular emails, be on the look out and uncheck these items on the form.
• Use a spam filter - Many email programs offer filtering capabilities to block suspicious looking messages. You should be careful because they also sometimes block legitimate email. Check the spam filtering settings in your email and make sure to look in the spam folder if you are missing a message that you were expecting.
• Consider opening an additional email account -Open a free alternate email account (Gmail, Hotmail, Yahoo, etc.) and give this address when shopping online, signing up for services, completing forms or posting your address on public sites. This will protect your primary email account from any spam that might be generated.
       

How To Report Spam

Here are steps that you can take to report any spam you receive.

1. View the headers of the spam email. This will show the original sender of the message. See the Help Desk Central website for step-by-step instructions.
        
2. Report the spam to an official source. Depending on the type of spam received, there are different options for where to send your complaint. For more information, see the US Department of Justice website.

If you need assistance, contact security@net.tamu.edu. Please include the full headers of a message so that we can help determine where it originated.