You may have noticed an increase in spam in the last few weeks. Lately, they make it sound like they know you, as they salute you with the first part of your aktivix address which may be your name. “Hi , here is your report/invoice as requested.

It may be tempting to reply back with a “No I didn’t request this”.

DON’T

By responding, you would be giving these spammer very valuable information that they don’t have yet: that the email address they have sent to, randomly, actually exists, and even more, that you have read and understood your email and that you have the capacity to respond. Once they know all this, your email address is even more marketable and will be sold to more spammers.

So, don’t respond to spam. And above all, especially, do not click on links and do not open attachments that they have included. You may be more protected if you are using a linux or *BSD computer, but if you are using a windows computer it is very easy to compromise (hack / own) it in this way.

If you have a few minutes to spare, it is a good idea to subscribe to spamcop.net and report to them any spam you have received that has not been marked as spam by the aktivix server. As long as you send it within 48 hours of receiving it, it will help us and other providers to mark any similar spam as such, so you only need to check that is it not a ‘false positive’ before discarding it.

For further information you can email us on aktivix-request at lists.aktivix.org or send us a message here: https://aktivix.org/contact or find us on the aktivix channel on irc.indymedia.org