How to post a message to a newsgroup, without getting spam and viruses

Author: Kristofer Gafvert
First Published: October 7, 2004
Last Updated: October 7, 2004
Last Reviewed: April 3, 2004
PDF: N/A

The newsgroups are not only being used by you and me to get help, or help someone else. They are also being used by spammers and viruses to find their next victim. But, instead of looking for advice, spammers and viruses are looking for an email address. Spammers use some kind of application to find out text parts in the body that contains an @ sign. Viruses are also looking for this. But that is not the only thing in the message they are interested in, they are also interested in the From and Sender part (which contains your email address). So, by writing you email address anywhere in the message, is like saying "Hey, send me some spam and viruses!".

It is however very easy to protect yourself from this. Never ever write your email address in the body part. And never ever use your real email address when sending to a newsgroup. To not write your email address in the body is easy, but what about the From and Sender fields? This is a little bit tricky, and I will explain this for Outlook Express. If you use another news reader, please look in the documentation.

Start Outlook Express
Click on Tools->Accounts
Click on the News tab, highlight the account you want to change this information for and click Properties
Change the E-mail address field to something that is not a valid email address (also change the Reply address field or leave it blank)
Click OK, click Close

Wasn't that difficult, was it? And this will save you from alot of unwanted emails!

But what if you actually wants people to be able to contact you? Well, this isn't as difficult really. A human is still smarter than an application, so if someone writes their email address like this: kristofer@removeThis.ilopia.com, then we understand what the valid email address would be. But an application will not understand this. Or, removeThis is such a common word to include, that an application sooner or later will understand that it should actually remove that text. So, I suggest that you put some other words there instead. And if it's not really clear what to remove, you can write in your signature what word should be removed. But remember, the spammer/virus will still try to send emails to your email address (no matter if it's valid or not). So, we can actually reduce some load on the email server if we are really smart and write this fake word in the domain part (right side of @ sign). Your mail server administrator will thank you for doing this!

So, by following a simple advice (Never ever use your real email address when posting to a newsgroup), we will reduce the number of viruses and spam emails sent to us. Does this really work? I would say yes, I've been posting to newsgroups for several years, and I post about 30 messages per day, and i have not got any virus by email yet (related to newsgroup postings). I receive only a few spam email per month (which could be related to something else, you never know how they got your email address).

But what if you have already made the mistake by using your real email address? Well, it's not that bad, and it's better to change to a fake one even if you have already used your real one. But the newsgroups are public, and they are replicated to other news servers around the world, and your email address will be posted to websites that provides a web based user interface for the newsgroups, so, your email address is already publicy available in the whole world when you read this.

Oh, and don't forget, use Antivirus software and make sure that real-time scanning is enabled. Also, install a firewall if you have not already done so. And when you are at it, why not make up a backup scheme for your home computer (they probably already have one at work)? It's very simple using Window's built-in Backup Utility, and the day when you have lost all your files (because of a hardware failure, virus, or something else), you will be happy!

Feel free to spread this link, rewrite the text, and inform everyone you know about computer security, and how simple steps can protect you.