Spam: The PDF Spam and Protecting Your Children
Written by kiti SEO on 11.4.08For a spammer, the use of PDF files is advantageous because PDF files are so commonly used in the business world. In fact, several companies allow or even require their business email systems to deliver these documents to the recipient. This makes it very likely that this PDF spam will reach the user's inbox.
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 Children
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.
Whitelists - Set up an email account for your child that "whitelists" only specific email addresses. A whitelist is just a list of trusted and approved email addresses. For example, you can have the addresses of your child's grandparents, aunts and uncles whitelisted. Whenever email is received from any of the whitelisted addresses, it goes directly to your child's inbox. All other email addresses are blocked.
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."
Be sure to log into your child's email account on a regular basis to monitor the incoming and outgoing messages, and to ensure that the spam filter and spam block are working appropriately.
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