Check dates and times on any email that you are unsure of. These companies know that many email programs will sort inbox by earliest mail sent. As a result, they place false send dates and times on their Spam hoping that you will open them first.

The worst has to be ones that seem to come from companies that you know and trust. They may claim to be from your internet service provider in subject line or have a similar address to that company’s name. It may look like it is from accounts payable department of a major law firm.

Spammers count on your curiosity and hope that you will respond. Even if you don’t buy anything, they now know that your email address is connected to a live person and, if nothing else, can sell that address to someone else.

Read To and From fields in any questionable email that you receive. If To field is empty or filled with an anonymous address, then you have Spam. An anonymous address is typically something like freeoffer@happydays.com.

An address from someone that you do not know through an account at hotmail, yahoo, or msn is probably Spam. These are anonymous, easy to get accounts that spammers use and then discard when they are done. By time Service Provider has been made aware that spam is originating from these accounts, spammer is gone.

Scrambled, random addresses (X12YT853@yahoo.com) from accounts like these are definitely not to be trusted regardless of content.

Finally, if email contains a story in which you are asked to do anything to help anyone, check story out online. There are several great websites like truthorfiction.com that will help you sort through any potential scams or hoaxes perpetuated through email.

These stories can range from silly pranks to dangerous fraud schemes and may need to be reported to proper authorities before someone, like you, finds their bank account drained.

Lewis Leake is the webmaster of eMailCash.com. There you will find articles, resources, books and product reviews on eMail Marketing Strategies and Tactics. You will also find a number of articles on SPAM and how to prevent it. Get Your FREE Mini-Report Spam and It's Consequences!

Anti Spam Software for Desktop The dramatic increase in spam volume has prompted a corresponding surge in stand-alone anti spam software solutions for desktop, all with varying levels of effectiveness. Some anti spam software uses text filtering to screen incoming messages for known characteristics of spam, while other solutions rely solely on reputation systems that monitor and categorize email senders by IP address according to their sending behavior. Still other anti spam software uses “challenge/response filters” to block unapproved mail until sender responds (manually) to a challenge email sent to their email account to verify his or her identity.

With so many different methods of filtering spam, no single software-based desktop anti spam solution is capable of effectively stopping spam before it reaches inbox. The only way to successfully fight spam is to create an anti spam “cocktail” including reputation services, text filters, constant updates and a host of other best-of-breed spam blocking methods. Just as importantly, an effective anti spam solution should reside at email gateway, not at desktop. Without protection at gateway, mail servers waste massive amounts of bandwidth and storage space processing every message, wanted or not, and end users face unenviable task of deciding what to do with countless spam messages that successfully reach them.

Take a Consolidated Approach to Anti Spam Although it takes a person only a moment to process a message and identify it as spam, it is difficult to automate that human process because no single message characteristic consistently identifies spam. In fact, there are hundreds of different message characteristics that may indicate an email is spam, and an effective anti spam solution must be capable of employing multiple spam detection techniques.

In addition to effectively identifying spam, businesses must be assured that legitimate mail is not blocked in error. Even one false positive, or incorrectly blocked email, can have a significant impact on businesses today. Accurate spam blocking requires a combination of tools to examine various message criteria combined with real-time research and intelligence data.

By aggregating multiple spam detection technologies like text filtering, reputation services, traffic analysis and other best-of-breed techniques, and placing solution at email gateway in a hardened appliance, enterprises can retake control of inbox.