We’ve all received emails that we just don’t want! They could be special offers, customised deals or even newsletters. These emails are mostly a waste of time.

What is Spam?

Any unwanted email can be termed as spam. Spam emails usually ask you to buy or subscribe to a product or service, offer a discount or a great deal or could even be newsletters from companies.

How do I stop receiving Spam?

The fact that spam is being sent means the sender has procured your email ID. Most of us do not even realise that we are giving our email IDs every so freely. For example, if you make an account on an website (could be a shopping or food ordering website), you are providing your email ID. Once you have provided your ID you will get regular emails from that site sharing their updates.

There is no simple and automatic way to stop receiving these emails.

You could check at the bottom of each email for an “unsubscribe” link. This will usually remove your email ID and the emails should stop.

You could also mark the email as spam/junk. Most email services like Gmail, Outlook etc. offer this option and do a pretty good job of blocking such emails.

If you are in a corporate environment, please ask IT to provide a process for you to report emails as spam.

What is Phishing?

Phishing is the fraudulent attempt to obtain sensitive information such as usernames, passwords and credit card details by disguising as a trustworthy entity in an electronic communication.

This has become extremely common. For e.g. you may receive an email from Google saying your account is going to expire, please enter your username & password to verify your account.

You may also get an email saying your bank is issuing a new credit card and to avail of this offer you need to login to the bank website. A link will be provided. In this case the link will take you to a site which looks like the bank website but is not! Once you enter your details, they will be used to transfer money out of your bank account.

The modus operandi for Phishing is as follows:

Never provide any sensitive information such as username, passwords, pins, OTPs etc. online to any unauthorised site.

Always check the “from” email ID. This may not be visible directly and you have may have to click further to see it.

What is Ransomware?

Let’s understand this with an example. Lets say that you visit the bank to access your locker. You have your key. Now when you reach the locker, your key doesn’t work! The bank manager now tells you to pay him or else he wont issue another key. You are being held at Ransom! Also, your locker contents have not been stolen. You have just lost access to them.

Now consider the bank as your computer, the hard disk drive as your locker and your username and password as the key. What happens in this case is that your data is still on your hard disk drive, but because its coded (encrypted), you can’t access it! The attacker will ask for money to provide you with the key.

Many many companies have lost millions of dollars due to this.

Email Best Practices

1. Do not provide your primary email ID freely. If you need to provide an email ID, create a separate one.
2. Do not open emails from people you do not know.
3. Do not open any suspicious looking emails.
4. Never open attachments from people you don’t know.
5. If someone you know never sends you attachments and now has suddenly sent something, ask them if they have sent it before opening it.
6. Unsubscribe from regular spam emails rather than just deleting them.

What do I do now?

If you liked this article and found it useful, please subscribe to my blog by entering your email ID in the subscribe box and click subscribe. Also, share it with your friends.