THIS SURPRISINGLY SIMPLE EMAIL TRICK WILL STOP SPAM WITH ONE CLICK

3đôi mươi billion spam emails are sent every day, this simple trichồng could stop them.

Bạn đang xem: This surprisingly simple email trick will stop spam with one click

Getty

Some 320 billion spam emails are sent every day, và 94% of malware is delivered via this medium. What if I were to lớn tell you a surprisingly simple one-clichồng gmail triông chồng could stop them?

Over half of all global gmail traffic is spam, a statistic that is only surprising in as far as most people probably expected it to lớn be more than that. To put that inkhổng lồ some perspective sầu, the latest analysis from Cisco Talos intelligence puts the average daily spam volume for April at 3đôi mươi billion.

Spam is always annoying, sometimes amusing và often dangerous. According to lớn Google, its Gmail service blocks more than 100 million phishing emails every single day, 18 million of them related khổng lồ COVID-19 in some way. With as much as 94% of malware being delivered by gmail, và one in every 3,000 tin nhắn messages containing malware payloads, spam remains a very real problem in 20đôi mươi.

But what if I were khổng lồ tell you a surprisingly simple gmail triông xã could stop that spam with just one click?

A brief history of spam

The history of spam is a long & dishonorable one. I"ll skip the tin nhắn advertisement sent to a couple of hundred users of the Advanced Retìm kiếm Projects Agency Network (ARPANET), a technical precursor to the mạng internet as we know it, bachồng in 1978. Instead, I had lớn wait until April 1994 before receiving my first spam message: sent khổng lồ USENET groups rather than by gmail, advertising a green thẻ lottery service by two lawyers, Canter and Siegel.

It was this simple advertising message that formed the foundation of what became the junk tin nhắn phenomenon. That danger was demonstrated almost precisely đôi mươi years ago to lớn the day when the ILOVEYOU worm was distributed by tin nhắn and infected millions of Windows computers. Across the two decades that have sầu followed, spam has remained the primary vehicle for delivering malware as well as being an ever-present irritant.

MORE FROM zerovn.netHow This Chinese Google Hack Has Made Working From trang chủ SaferBy Davey Winder
MORE FOR YOU

Why You Should Stop Using Your Facebook Messenger App

WhatsApp Just Gave sầu 2 Billion Users A Reason To Stay

iOS 15 Reveal: Apple’s iPhone Software To Include Stunning New Privacy Feature

How vày you deal with a problem lượt thích spam?

Twenty years ago, spam blacklists were the most commonly used anti-spam technique: and oh boy did they suck. Filtering spam by the IPs of known bad senders only works if those IPs are not only known but accurate. Seeing as many spammers used the same internet service providers as everyone else, false positives were the order of the day và most of us turned such filtering firmly off soon enough.

Dedicated spam filtering solutions using a combination of sender reputation scoring & keywords soon emerged và proved more effective sầu. They did, however, require a period of training whereby the recipient would have sầu to categorize gmail as being spam or not manually.

Thankfully, tin nhắn applications now come with anti-spam measures built-in, và the likes of Gmail, for example, reckon the machine learning algorithms that power the spam filtering for 1.5 billion Google email users are 99.9% accurate. That still leaves way too many actual spam messages getting through when you vì the math, & it"s dealing with these that is proving difficult. A new one-click gmail triông chồng that is currently being tested by Mozilla could provide the solution for 250 million Firefox users.

Xem thêm:

Mozilla"s one-click killer gmail triông xã to khuyến mãi with spam

Going by the name of Private Relay, Mozilla is currently testing a new add-on for Firefox users that could put an kết thúc khổng lồ unwanted emails using a single cliông xã. The idea behind the new add-in is undoubtedly not new. Still, Mozilla is making it so easy lớn use that it could revolutionize the way we khuyễn mãi giảm giá with unwanted, annoying and potentially dangerous emails.

That idea is gmail aliases, where you create different email addresses for services & sites that you sign up to while keeping your "real" tin nhắn to yourself. Gmail users, for example, might sign up with e.xample
gmail.com instead of example
gmail.com as a "dot" before the
symbol doesn"t change where the tin nhắn ends up, but does help to identify where spam is coming from. But that"s not as easy to manage as the Firefox solution.

By simply clicking on a "relay" button next to the email fields, once installed, the add-on will allow an alias lớn be created on-demvà. All emails sent khổng lồ that new address will automatically be forwarded lớn your actual address. Mozilla describes the Private Relay Firefox add-on as being able to generate "quality, random, anonymous gmail addresses that forward khổng lồ your real address," and when done with you can "disable or destroy the tin nhắn address."

MORE FROM zerovn.netDownloaded Twitter Data Using Firefox? Could Hackers Have sầu Stolen Your Data?By Davey Winder

This user interface is what makes Private Relay so simple, & so powerful: removing the alias means that no further emails will be received, all spam will be terminated from that sender và any others they might have sầu shared your address with.

If a service you are using suffers a data breach & logins appear on the dark web, a would-be attacker wouldn"t have your email address for use in executing a credential stuffing attaông xã. "We all make many online accounts, but most of them are linked lớn 1 or 2 of our gmail addresses," Mozilla said, "this means if just one account is hacked or tracked, every other tài khoản & its associated data is now also at risk."

MORE FROM zerovn.netRevealed: The Supermarkets That Will Sell You Malware For $50By Davey Winder

So, what"s the catch?

Ah, yes, the catch. There"s always a catch. In the case of Mozilla"s Private Relay, it"s merely that it is still in testing mode at the moment, an invite-only alpha testing mode. That will change in due course, & by keeping an eye on the Private Relay pages you will be able to sign up khổng lồ the waiting danh mục & join in "soon," according khổng lồ Mozilla.

Xem thêm: (5 Bước Chi Tiết) Cách Làm Web Wordpress (Có Video), Hướng Dẫn Cách Tạo Website Bằng Wordpress

You might also think for old-timers lượt thích me who have had the same very public email address for more than đôi mươi years, then maybe it"s a little late khổng lồ start using aliases, but think again. It"s never too late khổng lồ start dealing more effectively with the problem of spam. I"ll be front & center of the queue to test this one when the testing expands.

I"m a three-decade veteran technology journacác mục và have sầu been a contributing editor at PC Pro magazine since the first issue in 1994. A three-time winner of the BT Security Journacác mục of the Year award (2006, 2008, 2010) I was also fortunate enough khổng lồ be named BT Technology Journalist of the Year in 1996 for a forward-looking feature in PC Pro called "Threats to lớn the Internet." In 2011 I was honored with the Enigma Award for a lifetime contribution khổng lồ IT security journalism. Contact me in confidence at davey