One Step Ahead

Spammers resort to all the dirty tricks they can think of to get you to open their junk mail. I get spam with innocuous-looking subject lines like "Here's the document", "Undeliverable document" and "Hi from a long-lost friend". And then there are the more aggressive subject lines like "I saw your name on a spam blacklist" and "Naked photos of your wife".

But seasoned e-mail users are getting used to even these sort of messages. So spammers now have a new trick: including personal information in the subject line - such as your pet's name, family members' names, or even passwords that you use.

How do they get this information? They install "spyware" on your computer, which monitors all your keystrokes and sends them back to the spammer, who can then insert these into the outgoing e-mail.

The most important thing is to protect yourself from spyware. It can do far worse things than just trick you into opening junk e-mail!