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Spam bait

Spam bait is e-mail sent in the hopes that the unwitting recipient will reply, indicating to the original sender that the recipient's e-mail address is a valid one and can be added to a mailing list for spam.

Spam bait can be hard to counter. The most effective strategy is a negative one: do not reply to such messages!

Another, more technical strategy is to ensure that your e-mail account does not automatically fetch embedded images in webmail. Some e-mail contains HTML code whose main purpose is to provide feedback to the spam bait sender. When your e-mail software requests delivery of the image, the address of that image can contain a tracking code. The sender returns the requested image but also gleans from the tracking code the fact that they've found another valid e-mail address. Then you get more spam.

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This guide is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia.