What is spam?
A spam, or unsolicited message, is an e-mail which reaches your mailbox without your consent, and which bothers you. It can be:
- newsletters or commercial messages sent by well-known advertisers
- advertisements disseminated massively and regardless of ethics
- fraudulent messages sent by malicious people
Numerous spam messages are detected and blocked by the Mailo mail servers before they reach your mailbox.
Unfortunately, some messages are not blocked by the servers and reach your mailbox. Depending on the type of message, different behaviors are recommended.
Newsletters and commercial messages
Numerous well-known companies send e-mails to whomever has already visited their website, used their services or purchased something.
In most cases, they allow users to unsubscribe from their newsletters, which is a good way not to receive any further e-mails from them.
However, some of them only allow partial unsubscriptions, which will not prevent further messages from being received.
Advertisements without ethics
It is very difficult to guard against these messages, since the advertisers use different sender addresses for each message, precisely to get around the antispam measures set by the servers and the users.
Fraudulent messages
These messages are sent by malicious people who are trying to scam you. The spammer can for instance:
- pass himself off as your bank or a similar organization, to get your access login and password to your bank account
- pass himself off as your Internet provider or your e-mail provider, to get the password of your e-mail account
- pretend that you have won a lottery, or that you inherited a large sum of money; his/her goal is to make you pay fees or charges before vanishing
- ask for your help to transfer a large sum of money and offer you some of it; his/her goal is to make you pay fees or charges before vanishing
A few easy rules to avoid frauds:
- If you receive an e-mail from someone you do not know and who does not know you, do not answer.
- If you receive an e-mail which pretends to come from a service which you use, and which asks for your password for whatever reason, do not answer and transfer the message to contact@mailo.com.
- If you receive an alarming message asking you to securize an online account which you use, it is most certainly a fraud attempt.
Why do you receive spam?
You can receive spam as soon as your e-mail address is known by a spammer. Spammers are then likely to exchange it, which increases the amount of spam you receive.
Your e-mail address can be known by a spammer in the following cases:
- you have given out your e-mail address on a unreliable site whose service you wanted to use
- one of your correspondents has a virus and its address book has been compromised
- you have a virus yourself and it has accessed your computer's configuration
How to avoid spam with Mailo?
You can configure Mailo as follows:
- receive in your inbox the messages from correspondents in your address book or in your list of known e-mail addresses
- receive in the Spam folder all the other messages
- whenever you receive in the Spam folder a message from a new correspondent, you can add him/her to your address book or to your list of known e-mail addresses
Mailo allows you to create aliases:
- Aliases are alternate e-mail addresses, which allow you to manage several addresses in a single Mailo account.
- Whenever you need to give your e-mail address on a site which you do not fully trust, create a new alias and use it instead of your usual address.
- If one of your aliases receives spam, you can easily delete it.