How to Protect an Email Account from SPAM

Most of us get SPAM every day. Some of us get more and some little. Even a newly created email account will begin to receive spam just after a few days of it’s creation. Many times we wonder where these spam come from and why? But this question remains unanswered within ourselves. So in this post I will try my best to give every possible information about the spam and will also tell you about how to combat spam.

What is SPAM?

Spam is the abuse of electronic messaging systems (including most broadcast media, digital delivery systems) to send unsolicited bulk messages indiscriminately. Most widely recognized form of spam is email spam.

Where do these SPAM come from?

These spam come only from spammers and never from a legitimate user or a company. These spammers send a single email to hundreds (some times thousands or millions) of email addresses at a time. They either send it manually or use spambots to automate the process of spamming.

Why do spammers SPAM?

The main goal of spammers is to send the spam (unsolicited bulk messages) to as many people as possible in order to make profit. For example, John builds a small website to sell an ebook which gives information about weight loss. In order to make sales he needs publicity for his website. Instead of spending money on advertising, John decides to create an email which contains information about his site along with it’s link and send this email to say 100 email addresses in his contact list. If 1 person out of hundred buy this book john gets $10. What if he sends this email to 1000s of email addresses. He gets $100. Imagine, if he sends this email to 1 Million email addresses he gets $100000.

Now I hope you understood the idea behind spamming. So in order to make money, spammers send their advertising emails to as many people as possible without respecting the recipient’s privacy.

How to Block Unwanted Emails

Do you want to block emails from your ex wife/husband? Do you want to block those annoying offers and newsletters that reach your inbox? Well here is a way to block all those unwanted and annoying emails that you do not want to see or read! With this trick you can block individual email address or the whole domain from which you do not want the emails to come from. Here are the step-by-step instructions to do this.

For Gmail

1. Login to your account

2. At the top-right corner, click on Settings

3. Under Settings, click on Filters

4. You’ll now see an option “Create a new filter“, click on it

5. Now in the From field enter the email address from which you do not want to receive the emails

For ex. you may enter john@gmail .com in the From field to block all incoming emails from this address. However if you want to block the whole domain then use the following syntax: *@xyz.com. Now all the incoming emails from the domain xyz.com will be blocked.

6. Click on Next Step, select the action you’d like to take on the blocked emails. You may select the option Delete it so that the blocked email is moved to trash. To unblock the email, all you need to do is just delete the filter that you’ve created.

12 Tips to Maintain A free Virus Computer

Is your computer infected with virus? Do you often get mysterious error messages? Well this is a common problem faced by almost all the computer users across the globe. There are many viruses and worms out there that could infect your computer. Some are harmless, but, they do have the capacity to do any number of nasty things, up to and including, erasing all data from your computer. However there are ways to keep viruses away from your PC. Here are the 12 tips to maintain a virus free computer.

1. Email is one of the common ways by which your computer can catch a virus. So it is always recommended to stay away from SPAM. Open only those emails that has it’s origin from a trusted source such as those which comes from your contact list. If you are using your own private email host (other than gmail, yahoo, hotmail etc.) then it is highly recommended that you use a good anti-spam software. And finally NEVER click on any links in the emails that comes from untrusted sources.

2. USB thumb/pen drives is another common way by which viruses spread rapidly. So it is always a good habit to perform a virus scan before copying any data onto your computer. NEVER double-click the pen drive to open it. Instead right-click on it and select the option “open”. This is a safe way to open a pen drive.

3. Be careful about using MS Outlook. Outlook is more susceptible to worms than other e-mail programs, unless you have efficient Anti-Virus programs running. Use Pegasus or Thunderbird (by Mozilla), or a web-based program such as Hotmail or Yahoo (In Firefox).

4. As we all know, Internet is the main source of all the malicious programs including viruses, worms, trojans etc. In fact Internet contributes to virus infection by up to 80%. So here are the tips for safe surfing habits so that you can ward off virus infection up to the maximum extent.

• Don’t click on pop-up windows that announce a sudden disaster in your city or announce that you’ve won an hourly prize. They are the ways to mislead Internet users and you should never trust them.
• You can also use a pop-up blocker to automatically block those pop-ups.

5. Most of us use search engines like Google to find what we are looking for. It is quite obvious for a malicious website to get listed in the search results. So to avoid visiting those untrusted malicious websites, you can download and install the AVG LinkScanner which is a freeware. This tool can become very handy and will help you to stay away from malicious websites.

Know The Date Of Installation Of Your Windows

Sometime you may need the OS installation date. You may want to know how old is your OS or any other information related to your system. Windows does not provide direct information about the installation date of installation of your OS.

However you can view the date of OS installation from command prompt by giving some syntax to it.

With following command you can view whole detail about the manufacturer and about your OS. In this tutorial I am focusing to installation date of Windows.

Open command prompt window by going to Run and type “cmd” (without quotes).

Input “systeminfo” command to it.

It will look up for system information and load the result below the input.

Search for the OS installation date. There you’ll find exact date for installation of OS. Not only this, you can view the BIOS version of your system, Computer model name, Product code, Time and date of system startup etc.

Hope this tutorial was informative.

10 Tips for a Total Online Security

With the sudden rise in the Internet usage across the globe over the past few years, there has also been a rise in the amount of online scams and frauds. Today most of the Internet users are unaware of the most prevailing online threats which pose a real challenge for their safe Internet usage. As a result, Online Security has become a questionable factor for the most Internet users. However it is still possible to effectively combat online insecurity provided that the users are well aware of the common scams and frauds and know how to protect themselves. A study shows that over 91% of the Internet users are unaware of the online scams and are worried about their security. Well if you are one among those 91% then here is a list of 10 tips to ensure your total online security.

1. Always install a good antivirus software and keep it up-to-date. Also install a good anti-spyware to keep your PC away from spywares. Click Here for a list of recommended anti-spyware softwares.

2. Always visit known and trusted websites. If you are about to visit an unknown website, ensure that you do not click on suspectable links and banners.

3. Perform a virus scan on the files/email attachments that you download before executing them.

4. Regularly Update your operating system and browser software. For a better security it is recommended that you surf the Internet through the latest version of your browser program.

5. Never share your password (email, bank logins etc.) with any one for any reason. Choose a strong password (A blend of alphanumeric+special symbols) and change it regularly, eg. every 3 months. Avoid using easy-to-guess passwords. (ex. pet’s name or kid’s name)

Free SMS worldwide- I am serious

Get ready to send free SMS to every corner of the world. I am not talking about the free SMS services like WADJA, MJOY which limits you less than 150 characters. I am actually talking about that SMS Gateway which is provided by the University of Liverpool.

You can send SMS to any cell phone service from it. It uses Google’s Cloud computing technology.

The website is www.for-ever.us .
They allow the actual limit of SMS, i.e. 160 characters, without any ads and promotional message attached with it.

I won’t need it to define much as you already know what free Web bases SMS is. Just visit and enjoy the site.

How to Protect an Email Account from being Hacked

Today in this post I’ll teach you how to protect your email account from being hacked. Nowadays I get a lot of emails where most of the people say “My Email account is hacked please help…”. Now one question which arises in our mind is: “Is it so easy to hack an email account? OR Is it so difficult to protect an email account from being hacked?”. The single answer to these two questions is “Absolutely NOT!”. It is neither easy to hack an email nor difficult to protect an email account from bieng hacked.

If this is the case, then what is the reason for many people to lose their accounts?

The answer is very simple. They don’t know how to protect themselves from being hacked! In fact most of the people who lose their email accounts are not the victims of hacking but the victims of Trapping. They lose their passwords not because they are hacked by some expert hackers but they are fooled to such an extent that they themselves give away their password.

Are you confused? If so continue reading and you’ll come to know…

Now I’ll mention some of the most commonly used online scams which fool people and make them lose their passwords. I’ll also mention how to protect your email account from these scams.

How to Recover Hacked Email Accounts

It can be a real nightmare if someone hacks and takes control of your email account as it may contain confidential information like bank logins, credit card details and other sensitive data. If you are one such Internet user whose email account has been compromised, then this post will surely help you out. In this post you will find the possible ways and procedures to get back your hacked email account.

For Gmail:

It can be a big disaster if your Gmail account has been compromised as it may be associated with several services like Blogger, Analytics, Adwords, Adsense, Orkut etc. Losing access to your Gmail account means losing access to all the services associated it with too. Here is a list of possible recovery actions that you can try.

Step -1: Try resetting your password since it is the easiest way to get your account back in action. In this process Google may ask you to answer the secret question or may send the password reset details to the secondary email address associated with your compromised account. You can reset you password from the following link

Gmail Password Reset Link

If you cannot find success from the Step-1 then proceed to Step-2.

Step-2: Many times the hacker will change the secret question and secondary email address right after the account is compromised. This is the reason for the Password Reset process to fail. If this is the case then you need to contact the Gmail support team by filling out the account recovery form. This form will ask you to fill out several questions like

1. Email addresses of up to five frequently emailed contacts
2. Names of any 4 Labels that you may have created in your account
3. List of other services associated with your compromised account
4. Your last successful login date
5. Account created date
6. Last password that you remember and many more…

You need to fill out this form as much accurately as possible. It is obvious to forget the dates of last login, account creation and similar terms. However you need to figure out the closest possible date/answers and fill out this form. This is your last chance! The more accurate the information filled out in the recovery form, the more the chances of getting your account back. You may reach the account recovery page form the following link

Account Recovery Form