‘Tis the Season for your email inbox to overflow with spam! Ever since “Black Friday,” the day after Thanksgiving where many folks begin their holiday shopping frenzies, legitimate vendors and their illegitimate spammy counterparts have jockeyed for position among your regular serving of email solicitations. This happens every year around this time, but a recent article in Business Wire said that, “This year marks an all time high for spam, accounting for 10.8 trillion messages… [H]oliday spam has spiked, representing an initial 6 percent increase over pre-Thanksgiving levels – with more to come”

Yikes! With that in mind, I offer the following (abridged) tips from SPAMfighter, a leading spam filter developer in Europe:

• Never make a purchase or donate money through an unsolicited e-mail offer. If the offer sounds too good to be true, it probably is a scam. Holiday charity scams are a favorite technique of spammers and crooks. Donate through the trusted organization’s Web site directly. Consumers should create a separate free e-mail account for online shopping to avoid potential spam and to keep track of online purchases.
• Before you shop online, download the latest spam filter protection… Spam and virus filtering protection should be upgraded, at a minimum, once a year or more, depending upon Web visits.
• Don’t open holiday e-cards from unknown senders. This is a primary way for spammers to…send malicious malware.
• Watch out for higher levels of phishing e-mails. These are legitimate-looking e-mails from what appears to be a trusted, well-known brand, such as your bank or popular sites, like eBay and Amazon. In reality, this spam seeks to steal personal or financial information by redirecting the e-mail user to a fake, but very real-looking Web site, that asks for confidential or personal information. When in doubt, call the bank or company supposedly sending the e-mail and verify the request.
• Social networking phishing spam is on the rise. Phishers are using social networking sites, such as MySpace, to target specific groups of e-mail users with free gift offers and ads. Check your privacy settings on these sites to restrict who can access your information and never click on a link posted by an unknown source.
• Be cautious with hyperlinks to other Web sites and don’t open hyperlinks in an unsolicited e-mail. Clicking on the link is a confirmation to the spammer that an e-mail address is active and to whom it belongs, and more importantly, opens the door to new malware and viruses or a phishing site.

Need more info?
Google “holiday spam” for more tips and tricks.

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[Author’s Note: “Ask the Geek” is published weekly in the Stratford Star - the penultimate reading experience for residents of Stratford, Texas, population 1,920. It is posted on WritersCafe.net for posterity. Feel free to comment, but I can’t promise you’ll make the Star.]