On March 23, 2005 Mirapoint and the Radicati Group, a consulting and market research firm, released preliminary results of their end-user survey on email hygiene.

"This preliminary data is surprising and somewhat shocking to us," said Marcel Nienhuis, market analyst at the Radicati Group.

The survey shows that some end users haven't learned the lesson and still make the same blunders.

Blunder 1 -- clicking on embedded links within spam (not including the unsubscribe link) -- 31% of respondents have done it at least once. The most dangerous mistake.

Clicking on any embedded links in spam messages helps spammers determine ‘live’ email accounts, which means more spam.

What's worse, users can pick viruses, Trojans or other malicious code--just by clicking on embedded links. It may cause various problems, including loss of confidential information--identity theft, and loss of money from bank accounts as a result.

Users shouldn't forget about such threat as phishing. Not long ago, on February. 15, 2005, it was the Radicati Group that pointed out --fraud and phishing types of email are one of the fastest growing segments of spam. In the first quarter of 2005 the Radicati Group expects fraudulent emails to reach 8% of all spam.

The consequences can be very serious when such a user is at work.

Online criminals find more and more ways of stealing valuable information, some of these techniques include spam.

Spam filters won't solve the whole problem; much still depends on end users.

Marcel Nienhuis, analyst from the Radicati Group, was absolutely right when said " no technology in the world can protect an organisation if users' exercise bad email behaviour."

Alexandra Gamanenko currently works at Raytown Corporation, LLC—an independent software developing company.

This company provides software capable of disabling information-stealing modules, which can be hidden inside spyware as well as viruses, worms and Trojans. Learn more -- visit the company's website http://www.anti-keyloggers.com

Spam attacks where the text is replaced with images aimed at lightly protected email systems are growing in popularity. With the variety of anti-spam filters that analyze the message content to weed out unsolicited emails, spammers continue to increasingly adopt image spam

In 2003 we saw the introduction of the CAN-SPAM act which, regretably is a step in the wrong direction by the US government. This article provides my own personal opinion of why.

It is high time to stop making excuses and stop this junk email. Make use of anti spam filters to prevent the junk mails from reaching your inbox.

Before you are able to block spam, of course, you have to know what spam is. Spam, actually, can be defined in various ways. But to avoid any complications, spam is any form of junk mail or email that just keeps on advertising.

Under no circumstances will I ever purchase anything offered to me as the result of an unsolicited e-mail message.

Spam is not only bothersome but can be used for spreading malicious viruses, Trojans, adware, spyware and phishing scams.

One thing that has plagued more or less all the Internet users is Spam. Thus, the biggest ask of todays Internet age is Anti Spam tools.