Well, technically it can happen. Although this person did not send you anything like that, it is possible to get an email spam from somebody you know. How can that happen?

This happened to me before. I used a certain email address for school so my students were able to use it whenever they needed to send a assignment over the email. Recently I noticed that one of my students has sent me spam. I see her name in the sender field and the message title is something like “No regrets after doing this venture! Are you sick of lending money…” or another messages says “Re: Re: Hey, how are you?” The messages contain a link that is supposed to help you if you are in debt.

My student did not send me these messages but after doing some investigation, here’s what I think happened.

Sometimes spammers can get the email addresses of all your contact lists from your email account. There may be a virus that you, unknowingly, let collect information about your contacts and all your contacts may be receiving irritating advertisements that appear to have been sent from your address. Or, you get email spam from your contacts and your contacts did not send them, as in the above example with my former student. But somehow these contact lists have been hacked, especially with Yahoo and Hotmail accounts.

When you see you get spam from your contacts or even from your own email address, then you should report these messages to your email provider and delete your contacts list.

I do not keep a contact list in my yahoo account anymore and I can say that I haven’t received spam in my regular inbox ever since.

More resources and tips

Could you be sending spam?
Drug Spam Going Out To All My Hot Mail Contacts?

Some junk messages manage to find their way to my email inbox and to my phone as a SMS. In spite of web filters or my ability to fight email and SMS spam, I’ve got a couple of spam SMS and email spam lately. ‘Claim your free iPhone 4, enter code at biggiftwinner.com ” and ‘Apple is looking for iPhone5 testers Go to iphone5tester.com and enter 7777 to test and keep the new iPhone5″. Really?

I wish I did not have to read them, at all. But they’ve found a way to my phone so I read them and even went to these sites that promise you to get a free phone. I was curious to see how a scam like this is presented as a valid thing on an open website. The first thing that these websites want is your email address and then they ask for your personal information such as: your name, address and phone. Wow!

I believe that if you respond to these messages or enter your information on their website you will get more spam for as long as you keep your email and the same phone number. So, this made me think about some tips to stay protected against email and cell phone spam.

1. First of all, your email address should not be easy to guess. You’re likely to get more spam if your email is, for example, mark@yahoo.com instead of having an email that includes some numbers. m1a2r3k4@yahoo.com looks a bit silly but it will definitely protect you better from spam. An email account that has dashes or numbers such as mark_1234@yahoo.com will make it harder for spammers to guess your email.

2. When you publish your email on websites or web profiles try to disguise it. Type it as mark at yahoo.com instead of using the @.

3. Many stores or websites ask your for their email to send you newsletters, promotions, etc. Unsubscribe from them if you don’t need them and read if they share your email address for marketing purposes.

4. Have at least two email accounts, one for personal business and use the other for when you have to use your email on the web ( sign up for different accounts, etc).

5. Actively monitor your inbox and report as spam any junk email that gets to your inbox.

6. If you receive a SMS spam report it as spam to your wireless carrier.

More resources and tips

Put an End to Cell Phone Spam

Why Are You Getting So Much Spam?