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Spam: The PDF Spam and Protecting Your Children
Spammers are increasingly using PDF files to bear their spam messages. This practice begun in mid-2007, primarily as a scam to fool recipients into investing their money in the stock of a particular company of their choice.
The upside to the use of image and PDF spam is that so far, there is no hard evidence that either one can be used to embed malicious software on the recipient's computer. The only harm is done to those who do what the message says. Spammers have also begun to experiment with attachments in different file types such as excel and zip files.
Protecting Your Kids
Like all other Internet users, children are just as susceptible to receiving spam as are adults. And because spam is an equal opportunity menace, kids are just as likely to receive spam that contains adult and pornographic material. While there is really no way to totally eliminate the possibility of your kids receiving spam, there are steps you can take to minimize it.
Spam Blocker - Your email service may come with a spam blocker. If it does not, it may be worth your while to invest in one for your child's computer. Where-as your email filter filters incoming email into folders, the spam blocker blocks spam from going through the system. It checks your mail server every 10 minutes, where it deletes the spam and destroys any viruses it finds. Legitimate email is let on the server and downloads to the inbox when you log in.
Web beacons: A web beacon, also called an "invisible GIF," is an image sent out with spam that is invisible to the recipient. When the email is opened, the spammer will be alerted that your email address is "live."
It is very important to educate your children on the dangers of spam and how to handle it if they do receive any in their inbox.
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