Remember in the introduction we said that it has been reported that there is about 171 billion e-mails sent per day? A report issued by MessageLabs.com in November 2006 states that 74% of all e-mail is spam, that one in 137.5 e-mails contain a malware of some sort, and that one in 200 e-mails is a phishing attempt. That's right ... the majority of e-mail that is sent per day is useless unwanted trash that constantly fills our inbox. For those who do not understand what this means let me define each of these terms.

1. Spam = A spam e-mail is basically unwanted and unsolicited e-mail. There are companies whose entire business model is to send out unsolicited e-mail and flood your Inbox with trash. Spammers tend to get your email addresses by either stealing or buying contact lists, when you sign up with a service that sells your information, or when someone is infected with malware and has your email address in their address book. The best way to avoid spam is to make sure you read the privacy policy of any site you enter your email address into. Also it is important to never publicly post your email address as there are programs that scan the Internet for email addresses posted publicly.
2. Malware e-mail = If an e-mail contains malware it contains a small program that if you execute it, will infect your computer with a virus, worm, Trojan, backdoor, or spyware. These programs can cause loss of data and loss of personal information such as your online banking information. It goes without saying that you definitely do not want any of these programs running on your computer. Your best way to avoid getting infected from these emails is to not open anything from someone that you do not know or trust.
3. Phishing Attempt = A phishing attempt is when you receive an e-mail that is written and formatted in such a way as to trick you into thinking they are a legitimate company. They typically masquerade as e-mails from legitimate companies such as a financial institutions and contain links back to sites that look real. The reality, though, is these sites and e-mails are all fake and are simply being used to try and steal your information so that they can attempt an Identity Theft with your information. With that said, it is advised that you never provide information such as your date of birth, social security number, or other personal information at site that you arrived at from a link in an e-mail.

To combat spam, malware, and phishing attempts it is advised that you use

1. Anti-Spyware Product such as Spybot - Search & Destroy, Lavasoft Ad-Aware, or Webroot Spy sweeper
2. . An anti-virus product that you keep updated!
3. . Internet Explorer with the Phishing Filter enabled or Mozilla Firefox with its filter enabled.

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