Avoid Spam, gain improved privacy and security

While the advice here is mostly aimed at someone shopping for porn, we would say that it is relevant advice for anyone shopping online, or any internet user.

Potential dangers and annoyances facing the porn surfer

• Drowning in Spam. Perhaps the most common problem facing all internet users. While it may be pretty harmless it can be terribly annoying and making it both embarrassing and difficult to use your email any more. Also the spam may come with built in virus/malware, or perhaps more commonly with social engineering tricks to make you buy something.
• Drowning in Pop up, Redirect windows, Difficult to close windows. Another very common problem you may encounter if searching randomly for porn.
• Virus and/or Malware infections. If any of your OS installation, browser, and/or anti virus isn't up to date, there is the danger of some sites infecting your computer. This should not be a problem on any even remotely serious site, and Google have recently begun to address this problem through their search results. Nevertheless it's a potential worry if you search randomly for porn.

Suggested countermeasures to be able to shop on the net safely and without annoyances

While all sites we recommend won't send you spam or practice other unprofessional actions, there are a few basic measures anyone ought to take when surfing and shopping on the net, be it for adult entertainment or not.

• If you don't have one, sign up for a free web mail account, such as Hotmail or Yahoo. Then always use this mail whenever you need to sign up for something on the net, and use your regular email only for communicating with your friends and whatnot.
  This will ensure that when your email gets picked up by spammers, by whatever means, it won't affect your ordinary email account, and should the spam get too bad, you can always terminate the free account and start a new one, without having to tell all your friends you have a new email.
• Unless you get a "newsletter" etc, from a site (email sender) that you know is professional (like the sites we recommend), don't try to "Unsubscribe" or reply to them. It will only verify to them that the spam is reaching someone and will probably only give you even more spam.
• Also just basically ignore any emails you receive where you get "order confirmations" etc from sites you never heard of. It is most likely only a fraudulent way to get you to visit a particular site.
• Whenever possible, avoid submitting your email address, credit card information, and other personal information on any page that isn't secure. You can usually tell if a page is secure by looking for an icon in form of a lock somewhere in the browser window, often in the url window.
• Never send your user name, password or credit card details in a plain email.
• Consider using a browser other than Internet Explorer, such as Mozilla Firefox.
• Regularly do a sweep for "Spyware" with SpyBot - Search and Destroy, Windows Defender, or similar utilities.
• If you want to avoid having your employer or friends/family to see what you have been looking at, you need to clear the browser cache, last visited sites, and the Start menu documents list at a minimum.
• Treat all sites and email asking you to install some software as highly suspect. Well known Plugins like DivX and Quicktime excepted, but it might be safer to get them from the manufacturer site.
• Ignore any popup messages telling you that your computer is at risk, unless it comes from your antivirus software etc. It is common practice to use this kind of social engineering in order to get people to buy and install something they don't need/want. Spyware warrior has a good list over fake anti spyware/malware programs. Sometimes you may even get this kind of "attack" from a respectable site through third party adverts.
  
• Consider getting a Epassorte account or similar if you pay by credit card. In doing so you will avoid putting your regular card / account at risk at all.
  
• McAfee SiteAdvisor seems neat and might be worth a try. However, you may need to take the spam indicator with a grain of salt. We feel confident that some of the sites who are flagged as sending spam do not themselves send spam. But in any case as we already mentioned, it is a good idea to use a separate email address for all your shopping activities.