How Do I Get Rid of Spam and Viruses on My Computer?

I'm often asked this question by friends and clients. I'm not sure why. Maybe it's because of never complain of such things. Why? Well, I've found ways to fix these problems and it's mostly done with free software.

Yes, I've been a Windows XP user, but my main computer is a Mac. I also work with Linux in a server environment and I always have a terminal window up with a session at a server so that I can use those handy Linux functions when I need to. The software listed here is for Windows users mainly (since they have the most problems). It comes with no warranty or liability or support. You're on your own for installing and using it.

Stopping SPAM

For doing this, you need to do a combination of things. First, if you're using Outlook, ditch it. Download Mozilla Thunderbird now and install it. It's got some great anti-Junk Mail controls. You teach Thunderbird what junk mail is and pretty soon, it's filtering most of it out for you, reliably. It's also very easy to move from Outlook to Thunderbird. So, in fact, don't uninstall Outlook because Thunderbird, as it's installing, will copy information from Outlook for you.

Thunderbird works great and will get rid of a good deal of junk mail. There are other things to do as well. If your web hosting (email hosting) company offers spam filtering with SpamAssassin, then ask them to please enable that on your account. What this does is label suspected email as junk mail for you - at the server level. You see, lots of this junk mail is sent out by computers and viruses and they very often do not construct the email in the right way or they will construct the email in such a way that it's easy to tell if it's junk. This is what SpamAssassin does for you. Emails will come in with a modified subject line, which will make it easier to know what to throw away.

Another line of defense is knowing where your email address is. Is it on web sites? If so, has your web developer encoded your email address so that it's not easily read by email-gathering spiders? Ask them to do it for you. Also, you should know who has your email address. I always have an email address I use for registering at sites and one I use for personal email. I only have to check the former one once in a while and since it's at Yahoo!, they already do a great job of filtering out most junk mail.