Yahoo! Mail - Yahoo! Home Home Dump The Junk Mail Workplace Netiquette PPMT Syndrome Dump the Junk Day 2003   Dump the Junk 2003 Award   How to deal with junk mail  Junk mail study WELCOME TO THE INAUGURAL YAHOO! MAIL DUMP THE JUNK DAY 2003 Junk mail is the third most stressful aspect of daily working life for computer users after traffic jams and long working hours 94% of Britons find junk mail hugely annoying and most do not know the best ways to tackle it Intrusion of privacy (61%) and powerlessness (35%) to combat junk mail were cited as two of the most frustrating aspects of junk mail 22nd May sees the launch of a series of global events and campaigns, which will help educate email users on how to avoid junk email and the stress it creates. We've today launched a trial advertising first - educating people through their rubbish, using branded dustcarts, binmen, wheelie bins and bin-bags with tips on combating junk mail. The trial is being given a helping hand by Dean Gaffney, who is best known as Britain's most famous street sweeper, Robbie Jackson from Eastenders. Yahoo! European junk mail study: Our Dump The Junk study confirms that people are more frustrated by junk email than any other form of unsolicited communication. The study also concluded that email users are becoming victims of junk mail through a lack of know-how and some are even helping junk mailers by perpetuating the cycle of spam: "Dean Dumps The Junk" 56% of Britons are unwittingly perpetuating the cycle of spam by replying to junk mail. Spammers often trap the public and confirm email addresses are real by offering fake clauses to opt-out of a mailing list 25% of people had been fooled into opening junk mail believing it to be genuine communication 2% of British internet surfers have made a purchase in response to junk mail Big Brother's Professor Geoff Beattie assisted Yahoo! to analyse how junk email impacts on our lives. "Many causes of stress can be avoided or minimised and junk email is certainly a problem that, with some knowledge, better office email etiquette and guidance from Yahoo!'s tips , computer users can learn to tackle effectively." Highlights from around the world: Italy, France, Germany, Spain and Australia Dump the Junk Award As one part of this campaign, Yahoo! UK & Ireland will be calling on the British public to name and shame the nation's most irritating public enemy by looking for the UK's biggest junkmailer. The Dump the Junk Award will allow you to name and shame the people who are the UK's biggest junkmailers. We all have friends and colleagues who bombard us with joke emails and "wacky" attachments, so we want you to name and shame your friends and colleagues who are guilty of forwarding annoying junk emails and perpetuating the frustrating cycle of internet junk mail.   The Dump the Junk 2003 Award is very simple to enter: If you want to nominate someone, email details of the culprit to dumpthejunkaward@yahoo.co.uk , detailing your reason for nominating them and if possible including examples of the silly jokes and junk they've been bombarding you with. The "winning" culprit will be announced in the coming months and be banished to a Yahoo! junk mail boot camp to be educated on email netiquette. The award is one part of Yahoo! UK & Ireland's fight against junk mail. Our free, newly enhanced SpamGuard technology already filters out the majority of real junk mail before it reaches inboxes, and though we can't prevent your friends and family sending you rubbish, we can help persuade them to stop. We also have a worldwide team of experts who are dedicated to staying one step ahead of people who target you with unsolicited mail and we work tirelessly with other organisations to jointly devise new ways of combating junk mail. Yahoo! Sends SPAM® back to the can Yahoo! UK & Ireland and food giant, Hormel Foods Corporation, have joined forces to return SPAMŽ to its rightful place. Our joint campaign with the manufacturers of SPAMŽ chopped pork and ham, the spiced pork meat product immortalised by Monty Python, aims to reclaim "spam" from the world of IT jargon. The new alliance celebrates the launch of a new and more powerful version of SpamGuard, Yahoo! Mail's junk mail filtering technology that is part of the basic service available to all users of Yahoo! Mail. This launch and campaign also coincides with SPAMŽ Appreciation Week in the UK, so please read on and help us to drive spam out of the inbox and put it back on the dining room table where it belongs. DO DON'T Treat your email address like your phone number - don't give it out randomly Often when you register for a service via the Internet you're given the option in the small print to opt out of receiving emails from that company, or other business to whom they sell their mailing lists. Ensure you read the small print carefully especially where there is a checkbox, so that you know whether you want the checkbox ticked. By rushing through a registration process without due care, you could find yourself allowing a company a free reign to use your email address for marketing themselves or other companies. Be as careful giving out your email address as you are giving out your home telephone number. Use an email service with a recognised junk mail fighting tool - Yahoo! Mail's new and more powerful version of SpamGuard is an industry leading filter and it's free Practice good office etiquette by agreeing what non-work related emails, such as jokes, should or should not be sent around the company and how they should be labelled Learn how to use the simple blocking functionality on your email; your system will automatically block these emails for you Be careful when opening or forwarding attachments from addresses you don't recognise. Fortunately, attachments in Yahoo! Mail are scanned for viruses before you open them and save them to your Yahoo! Briefcase or hard-drive. When receiving any attachments always take a look at the extension (that's the 3 letter code at the end of any attachment, eg .jpg). You should be particularly vigilant with any attachments that have the extension .exe and .vbs as these files are programs which will run on your computer when you double click on them. Be sure you know what a file is before you open it. Be particularly vigilant if you do not know the sender. But no need to panic, Yahoo! Mail has the answers. As well as scanning attachments, Yahoo! Mail allows users to place a file in Yahoo! Briefcase or Yahoo! Photos and then offer the recipient the opportunity to download the file, by including a link in the email to your Yahoo! Briefcase or Yahoo! Photos. Many companies operate firewalls that prevent certain attachments entering their system. For this reason, using tools like Yahoo! Briefcase and Yahoo! Photos should ensures that emails reach the desired recipient's inbox. Report email abuse from spammers to your service provider to help get junk mail out of inboxes and back onto the dinner table! If you are unsure about an email in your inbox click here: http://help.yahoo.com/help/uk/abuse Ever reply to spam email - it will only lead to more junk mail Firstly, make sure your email account includes a filter to help prevent junk mails reaching your inbox, such as Yahoo! Mail's industry leading SpamGuard technology. One common junk mail technique, known as 'chain mailing' is where you receive an email requesting that you forward it to a number of your friends. This ploy allows multiple active email addresses to be collected for the purpose of large scale spamming to those who responded to the original chain mail. Also if you do receive a message that you're unsure about, use the link in your Yahoo! Mail inbox entitled 'This is spam'. This will then be reported to our spambusters and the email address is blocked for you. Click on a URL, web site or image within junk email - it could validate your email address and lead to further junk mail Post your email address in public places - spammers mine for email addresses and could pick up your in this way. If you do, adopt an assumed name or alias Fall for "personalised" or spoof email subject lines - you are being conned into opening the mail Spammers will try to trick you into opening spam mail by pretending to know you, or trying to intrigue you. Typical ruses include "Hey, how are you?", "Urgent and Confidential", "We need to meet". "I have money for you". Do not respond to mail with subject lines such as these unless you recognise the source. Send junk mail on to other people - spammers may get hold of their addresses and you may lose friends!