The meeting of Spam-A-Lot!

The king was fed up. Every time he or the queen would be anywhere there was is disturbance. There was always blast of noise when the showing of stuff or things he didn’t want. It was so bad that he couldn’t run the castle or even talk with his queen. He spent hours trying to quiet the noise and interruptions but everyone knew there was no way to stop Sir Spam-A-Lot from attacking the king’s email account.

Lucky for this King, he hear about knight two castles over with the name Ruben or something like that. This knight could help slow up Sir Spam-A-Lot and his squad. So, he send his army to get this knight that was two castles over. Knight Wubben, so we learn his right name, was happy to help the king with Sir Spam-A-Lot and his squad. Knight Wubben loaded his laptop and head to meet the king.

As soon as they arrive at the castle, Knight Wubben got right to work. “Before I do anything, King,” Knight Wubben said, “Let me look at your email inbox to see what going on!” Knight Wubben saw the King as getting 100 plus emails a day. Even some that made the queen blush and the king embarrassed. “What should I do, Knight Wubben,” the king asked, “I never sign up these types of emails. I feel if anyone saw this they would feel I am unfit to be king.” Knight Wubben when through page after page of spam emails, told the king he need some time to think, and he would return with a plan.

The first step was learning how Sir Spam-A-Lot was getting in to the king’s email account. Knight Wubben learned that the castle had a website and Facebook page with the king’s email address on them. The king knew it was important to keep a happy kingdom, he must know what’s going on through out the land. The king wanted a way for the serfs to connect with him. So he put his personal email on the website and Facebook.

The desire to connect with people in any kingdom is important, so Knight Wubben came up with ways for the king still be connected to the people but protect his email address.

1. Use a email form. By using a email form your email address is not as easily found by Internet Robot that look for addresses to spam.
2. Direct the email to the right parties with in the kingdom. On the email form ask the sender where they want to the email to be send. This will help the king to only receive email that will help him rule. He will save time be not forwarding email that were never met for him. For example, jokes to the kingdom jester will be send directly to the jester without the king needing to forward them because they were send to the king’s email account.
3. Use a Captcha or something similar on your email form page to insure that your sender is a human. By using a Captcha you can weed out bad emails send by Internet Spam Robots and making sure your never see them.
4. Use your contact page on your website as the address on Facebook. Instead of putting your email address on Facebook put the address of the contact page with the email form on it. This way your be using your email form to weeding out and spot bad emails.
5. Invest to a spam blocking software for your kingdom. If the spam is out of control and you might want to think get a anti-spam software for your kingdom’s network.
6. Make sure your kingdom’s network doesn’t have any malware or virus on it. Sir Spam-A-Lot can use malware and virus to collect email address to attack your email account.
7. Setup a Gmail or third party email account for general emails from his kingdom. This way he could use the build in spam filters Gmail accounts used.

These all looked to be great ideas but the king was still worry about Sir Spam-A-Lot. “There must be more we can do!,” the king beg Knight Wubben. Knight Wubben smiled. “There sure is king!,” Knight Wubben reply. Knight Wubben explain that the king might be helping Sir Spam-A-Lot. Again Knight Wubben gave the king a list of things to check.

1. King subscribe to a bunch of free e-newletters, email list, etc. Because of the king’s busy day, he never got to read them all. Most he had lost interest in reading, so they just fill his email box. Unsubscribe from the ones he doesn’t read would free up space.
2. Before he signing up for more, read the Terms of Service (TOS) so you know that will be done with your email address. In some case his email will be sold to a third party. This way Sir Spam-A-Lot and his squad get his current email address to rage spam emails on his account.
3. Do a search to find were the king’s email address is posted. The king could of posted his email on his social media posted, forums, etc. See how any of these you can get remove and not posted your email address in public places like these. If you must post an email address in these situations open Gmail or something similar and use that instead.

At this point the king started to believe that he had Sir Spam-A-Lot and squad conquered. “Not so fast king!,” Knight Wubben warned, “Sir Spam-A-Lot still has tricks to watch out for!” Just because the king delete the spam email doesn’t Sir Spam-A-Lot can’t get information about the king’s email address. Sir Spam-A-Lot can hide things inside the email to attack the king’s email account or worse the kingdom’s network. Knight Wubben again gave the king a list of things to check.

1. If you know it spam email, don’t open (or download) it. Today spam email has ways to find out if the email is “good!” Most commonly is the spam email contains images that must be gotten from the spammer web-server. If your email address ask for the images the spammer knows your email address is good.
2. If you do open the spam email, don’t click on the unsubscribe button, link at the bottom of the email, or any links within the email. Here again by clicking the unsubscribe or any of the links, the spammer can learn that your email address is good. What is even worse is the link is a phish attack. Leading you to download virus, bugs, etc.
3. Don’t reply to the spam emails. Delete and block them! As much as we like to say, “Please quit sending emails!” the only results is just showing the spammer that the email is good, so keep sending emails.
4. Most email account have a “Mark as spam” feature, use it. As you mark what is spam and what is not, the spam blocking software will learn what to keep out of your inbox. You will also help other because the spam blocking keep a list of known spam email and some cases delete them before even reach anyone inbox.
5. Have a good anti-virus/malware program and have it up to date. Even with the best protect malware can still access the kingdom’s network. To stop this a good anti-virus/malware program can catch it before the malware has time to spread.

With all this the king offer Knight Wubben all the gold from the kingdom. “That will do me no good, so return it to your people,” Knight Wubben say, “I must return. To find my princess warrior and get some coffee.” Knight Wubben smile and turned to the kingdom’s jester, “Don’t you starting any rumors, just coffee!”