Basically, what you need to do is to look for both internal and external evidence. If you can prove that the information is untrue, you can embarrass the sender. He will no longer send the email hoaxes to you. After a few practices, examining the internal evidence and then hunting for external evidence should not be a problem.

As the name implies, internal evidence can be found within the email itself. By analyzing the email, you can find out the sender. Another sign that an email is a hoax is usually the message has been forwarded over and over. Email hoaxes also tend to use uncommon fonts (full of color, quite large, etc). In addition, there is an insistent call to send the letter to people you are familiar with.

External evidence can be described as any evidence obtained from other sources, outside the email itself. To obtain the real truth, do a comparison of both the internal and external proof you can get. Using search engines, it is not difficult to find information about email hoaxes sent to you using the subject line or other keywords as the search phrase. It is also possible to investigate directly at websites like www.scambusters.org or www.hoaxbusters.org.

You have now learned easy methods to identify email hoaxes. Now it is the time to put your efforts to keep those fake warnings out of your inbox. Simply, just send them back. Include a copy of the information you got from one or more hoax-busting site. Show the sender all the proof. Do not forget to credit the source for each quote. Nobody likes to look foolish, this is especially true when leaving such a public paper trail.

Normally, anti spam tools work by scanning text messages. In order to fool such tools, spammers shift their strategy from using plain text to using embedded images to send their messages. It makes the spam messages become undetected by traditional spam filtering software.

The effects of this type of spammmy intrusion are worse than the older one. Images take more bandwidth than text. The increasing size and the sheer volume of image-based spams have forced many businesses and average people to block all emails that contained embedded or attached images.

The prevalence of this form of spam increased in 2006, primarily utilized for advertising penny stocks. By early 2007, image spam reached an all-time high. It was used to advertise everything, from sexual enhancement to fake pharmaceuticals.

Anti spam technology today can detect image spams. They utilize some techniques such as Optical Character Recognition. However, although spam filtering software or services have been able to reduce image-based spams, many spammers have also turned to another strategy. It is like the cat-and-mouse game.

As anti-spam technology catches up to new techniques, spammers also continue to innovate and change tactics to deliver their spam messages. Besides sending out PDF spams, they also use animated images, blurred text messages, and even vary the geometry of images.

Perhaps there are no best approaches facing this problem. However besides installing a good anti spam tool, you can try to not downloading images that come from untrusted sources. Some email client programs have already provided this feature.