Ever wonder where all those unwanted emails came from?  …And furthermore how they got our email address?  There are companies in the business of mining the Internet for information, making millions of dollars off of unsuspecting Internet subscribers.  The mining operation can consist of gathering information about anything from general market behavior to convincing unsuspecting consumers to give up information that would compromise their identity in today’s modern world of electronic shadows. 

 Many of these companies use a web crawler to mine email addresses from web sites.  Once they have the data the process of validating it occurs.  The most common approach to validating and mining further information is using a technique called Phishing.  This technique is comprised of an email with a subject line and even a sender that looks legitimate but has embedded code or an image that makes contact with a server to indicate that they have reached a live email address.  The whole point of the email was to get recipients to open it.   And then it begins.   

There are companies that have spent thousands of dollars on a sophisticated spam filter, firewall, and router rule systems to keep those pesky emails out.  Others have taken it further and established strict quotas on email and have in place a sophisticated policy that keeps their personal computers (PC)s safe from intrusion.  There are some consumers that have armed themselves with anti-spam, anti-ad-ware, anti-spy-ware software and believe that is all it takes.  And still there are others that don’t recognize it as a problem at all.

 The solution for most small to medium sized business lies some where in between the extremes of a sophisticated system to doing little or nothing.  For the users of those companies that established an elaborate protection system, their use of the PC can become severely restricted.  In many cases as the threat escalates, the remedy can exceed the PC’s resources and makes it very difficult to do work without more re-investment in computer resources.  A satisfactory solution can be reach with a middle of the road approach.   For example the use of firewall with network address translation (NAT) combined with some simple rules for computer users to follow combined with a good anti-virus/spy-ware/ad-ware software package, would work best for most small to medium sized business.  

 Some simple tips would be to configure your email to display text only and not to preview emails.  If you don’t know whom the email is from, don’t open it.  Instruct the anti-virus/ad-ware/spy-ware software to filter out those senders.  The most frustrating thing about Phishing is that it is difficult to avoid the consequences when once the email is opened.

 It’s all about safe computing in an Internet that rivals the wild-wild west.  There are very few rules and even fewer laws to protect consumers.  High speed Internet is reaching more consumers every day.  The big fish of the sea are waiting for them.  The best policy is to have as little footprint in the big Internet Ocean as possible.  Don’t be a victim.