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Reducing Spam

You can take an agressive stance by using a spam reporting service, such as SpamCop, or you can simply delete these emails. Never respond to these emails, click on an 'unsubscribe' link, or visit websites mentioned in the spam emails.

Texas.Net offers a Spam Filter option that can greatly reduce the amount of spam sent to your computer.

We also recommend using an email program with spam filtering capabilities, like the Thunderbird email client.

Spam includes:

• Unsolicited commercial advertising
  
  Most spam emails are meant to promote a product or service. Very few of these emails will include a valid From: address, so tracing their origin can be challenging.

• Emails attempting to spread a virus
  
  Often, a virus will attempt to infect other computers by emailing itself to every email address it finds on an infected computer. Texas.Net deletes potentially malicious file attachments which might contain common email viruses. Additional information can be found on our virus information section.

• Undelivered Mail notices resulting from failed spam emails
  
  Spammers send mail to you by addressing it To: you. But they rarely use a legitimate From: address. Spammers will use your address as a From: line, and you will get these emails when the To: address is not valid.   (more ...)

• Nonsense Emails
  
  Emails with no clear message or content are sent to confuse spam filters or just contribute to the volume of junk email that a network needs to deal with. You should delete these emails, and never respond or reply to a removal request.

Filtering Spam

• Lonestar Email Filter

  Texas.Net offers you the option to identify or delete incoming spam email. You may choose from three levels of filtering, along with options to either delete the mail before it is sent to your computer, or to tag it, so your email program can redirect it or delete it.   Activate Spam Filtering

  This is part of our member's Account Info section, so you will need your Texas.Net username and password.

• Filtering with your email program

  There are two ways you can filter spam email with your email program:

  You can use the Texas.Net spam filter 'tag' option, and have your email program direct it to a junk folder, so you can scan it for legitimate messages before deleting it. Enable Filtering

  Many email programs have "adaptive spam filters" that allows you to tell the program what a particular type of spam looks like, so it can deal with similar messages accordingly, in the future. Email programs with this capability are described in the Software area.

• Email Attachments

  Nearly all viruses that spread by email move in the form of an executable file attachment. For this reason, Texas.Net does not allow these to pass through our servers, and into your inbox.

  Many file attachments that can be executed automatically by Windows, or your mail program, are removed by our servers. When this occurs, you will receive an email notification informing you that the attachment was removed.   (more ...)

  Our servers may also detect some known viruses, including some that are embedded in .zip files. These will be removed, and a notification will be sent informing you of the virus removed.   (more ...)

Spam Prevention

• Never respond to a spam email
  Responding to spam will only tell spammers that your email address is valid, inviting them to send you more spam, and share your address with other spammers.

• Never use the "click here to remove" link on a spam email
  Trying to remove yourself from a spam list is the same as responding. It will validate the address and result in even more spam.

• Use caution in providing your email address
  When filling in web forms, using chat rooms, or posting to newsgroups, avoid using your email address when possible. Check the privacy policy of a website, to see if your email address will be shared or sold to others, before providing it.

• Use a second email address for use in public areas
  If you can obtain a second email address, just to use on web forms, and when needed in chat and newsgroups, you can reduce the spam sent to your main email account. Texas.Net provides additional email addresses, and some accounts include these at no additional charge.

More information about spam

To trace the source of the spam, you will need to look at the full headers of the email. There are a few cases when you might be able to alert someone that spam is originating from their network. We offer some assistance in viewing and reading the headers, deciding whether the spam should be reported, and determining where to report it. This information is provided as a reference only. Our support staff will not be able to assist you in addressing spam that originates from other networks, and is beyond our control.   (more ...)

The best way to report spam is to use one of the spam reporting services available. One of the oldest spam reporting services is SpamCop. After registering for the free reporting service, they will notify the originating network when you report spam through them.