Why am I still getting SPAM messages and what can I do about it?

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Research by the Federal Trade Commission and by the Center for Democracy and Technology found that email addresses posted on web sites or in newsgroups attract the most spam. A simple way to find out why you're getting so much spam is to type your email address into a search engine, such as google.com or bing.com. The more number of times your email address is found by the search, the more likely it is to be harvested by spammers (See: How can I avoid using the "mailto:" tag on my website to prevent spam?).

You might also receive spam if you fill out online forms or correspond with certain companies via email. Although most reputable sites have good privacy policies and won't share your information, it is up to you to decide what sites you trust not to sell your address to spammers.

Although computer experts are constantly designing better and better ways to filter out unwanted mail, the spammers are also constantly devising ways to get around those technical solutions. It is a very frustrating situation for users as well as for System Staff. It is a basic fact of Internet life that if you use the Internet, you will get unsolicited email. That said, we have employed modern advanced software to reduce the SPAM in our mailboxes. Any suspected SPAM messages are directly put into our Junk-Email folder. We have seen upwards of 98%+ accurate SPAM detection for our users which is considered very good. Generally, good Anti-spam systems average around 95%+ of accurate SPAM detection.

Suggestions to minimize SPAM:

1. You can mark the emails as Junk (See: http://www.cs.stonybrook.edu/facilities/ex/SPAMwhitelist.html) which will automatically provide feedback to the company providing functionality for our Anti-Spam system. This will also block that particular email address permanently from getting into your Inbox.
2. Don’t ever reply to any email you do not trust. Spammers use this to verify active email addresses.
3. Be careful releasing your email address and be aware how it might be used. You can use a secondary email address from provider such as Yahoo, Gmail or Hotmail for sites you do not trust.
4. Avoid listing your email address on public websites and use ways to hide your email address (See: How can I avoid using the "mailto:" tag on my website to prevent spam?).