How to spot SPAM Email

SPAM email can be extremely annoying, and whilst there are many pieces of software which will catch it before it reaches your inbox, the odd one still gets through. Whilst some of it can be fairly harmless, there are many examples of when a SPAM email can contain a virus, malicious software or a security risk. Here are some examples of what to look out for and AVOID;

Account updates - These are clever scams which have links directing you to a website which mimics a genuine organizations site. The emails suggest that you need to follow the link in order to ‘update’ your account details. Once there you are asked to login with your username and password, and often you are also asked for your bank details.

Requests for your password – Often, spammers put very little effort into their emails and simple make a copy of a company logo, embed it into their email template and then blatantly ask you for your password. These usually come from companies claiming to be your bank, building society or Credit Card Company.

Too good to be true – How would you like a new iPad mini for only £10, or perhaps a trip to Disney World for only £50 per person? It sounds too good to be true doesn’t it? Well that’s because it is.

Cries for help – This is another common scam which takes advantage of people’s good nature. The con artists pretend to be someone vulnerable, often a young girl who is supposed to be trapped abroad because she doesn’t have enough money for the air fair home. Be very wary.

Congratulations – You’ve won – The only way you can win a competition is if you enter it in the first place. The golden rule here is that if you didn’t, then you’ve not won anything and it’s a good bet that they are trying to trick you into something that will win themselves a prize – i.e. your hard earned cash.

Attachments – If you get a message with an attachment, and the message simply tells you to open the attachment as the rest of the message is contained within, and you do this then you’re a silly-billy. It will almost certainly be a virus or malicious software.

‘Help me’ messages - These often come from family, or people on your contact list, usually asking you for money because they are stranded. While you may have relatives traveling, it's a good idea to reach out to them using other means of communication when you get an email like this. Be wary, especially if they don't want to give a phone number or exact location.

Bad English – Sadly, many of these types of scams come from abroad, and as such you can tell that they are not legitimate by the bad choice of words and grammar being used.

There are ways to automatically avoid receiving SPAM email in the first place, by using an anti-SPAM filter. There are many to choose from and we can provide a great level of protection from as little as 30 pence per email address per month.

To find out more, please visit our website at this link. We hope to hear from you soon.

Client Testimonial

Another satisfied new customer decided to write a testimonial about his recent experience with us;


"We took a web hosting package with CCS Leeds to develop a website that has formed part of our corporate rebranding. We had a number of issues with the website code that was supplied by our web developers, and the support staff at CCS were always very helpful despite the problems being with our code, not the web space. Throughout the process, CCS have always supplied excellent, friendly service, up to the release of our rebranded website and beyond. The package was also at a good price, and has been highly reliable, so I would happily recommend them to other firms looking for web space, or other services."

Top 5 Free email services

Believe it or not, e-mail has been around a lot longer than you may think. Early incarnations such as morse code is said to date back to the mid 1800's, with the more traditional form of email appearing in the early 1970's.

As such, email has become an important too for communications and has in turn, made the world a much smaller place.

These days it is a very simple process to set up a free personal email account, without having to register and pay for your own domain name. Here, we have compiled a list of the top 5 email services, which are all popular and widely used my many;

5 - Outlook.Com



This service provides an email address account with almost unlimited storage, and is accessible from any web browser with a rich and helpful interface, or using other standards such as POP, Exchange ActiveSync via standard email programs or mobile phone applications.

4 - iCoud Mail 


iCoud is another free web based 'cloud' solution which is simple, elegant and integrates with other Apple hardware device, synchronising not only email, but contacts, notes, reminders and iWork documents.

You do need to register with an Apple ID prior to logging into the iCloud service though, and it does not POP access, although it can work with IMAP quite happily.

3 - AIM Mail -


AIM Mail is AOL's free web-based email service, and has unlimited online storage, some excellent spam protection and a rich, easy to use web front end.

Unfortunately, it lacks a bit in productivity (no labels, smart folders and message threading), but makes up for some of that with very functional POP and IMAP access and there are of course plenty of mobile smart phone applications.

2 - Zoho Mail

Zoho is a clean, fast web based email service with powerful features. It is designed for a more corporate environment but is still free for up to 3 users accounts, with 5GB storage and smart phone integration.

You can even use your own domain name rather than username@zoho.com, assuming that you already own one.

1 - Gmail

SPAM filtering, Virus protection, integration with real time chat, cross platform / hardware compatibility, Gmail really has it all and is one of the most reliable free email solutions out there. Google have clearly given a lot of love to this product and it shows. How can something so good and easy to use, also be free?

More customer feedback

Every now and then we do like to post when we get nice feedback from our clients. We don't do it all of the time as we wouldn't want to appear as being 'smug', but occasionally it backs up our reputation for good customer support.

Anyway, here is what they had to say;


"Many thanks for this info.  I’d just like to re-iterate what I’ve previously said before about CCS - It’s very refreshing to have a provider that keeps on top of the carrier until you get the answer, and let us know what really happened.  I do keep re-iterating to the guys here about if had gone direct to [well known telco] as a provider that we would have been just “another number in the crowd” and would never get the information you get.

So, my thanks to you and the entire CCS staff for this and other recent support."

Oh well, smug every now and then doesn't do any harm.......

Beware - How safe are your servers?

Cyber criminals are selling the login information to some of the worlds largest companies servers, illegally.

Spammers and such like are buying this information so that they can access these servers for various reasons, including fraud, data theft and using them as mail relays so that they can send out millions of SPAM emails.

This information can be either purchased outright, or on an hourly 'pay as you go' basis, which could cost as little as £2 per hour.

We feel it is important to make companies aware of these potential dangers and security threats as it could cause serious disruption to your network,which in turn will cost you money.

All of this can be avoided of course with the right security measures in place, password policies and firewall set up. These are things that we at CCS Leeds can assist with.

Charity Work

We are pleased to announce that we are currently working with a local charity called the LS14 Trust, who are based just around the corner from us in Seacroft, Leeds.

The trust is passionate about the local community and was set up by a group of local residents to make a difference to the neighbourhood. They are based in the Digital lounge and offer a range of services to the local residents including;

• Free internet and IT resources
• Help with writing CV's
• Meeting space
• Drop in and general advice
• Volunteer opportunities
• Free legal advice clinics

CCS Leeds felt that this local charity was worthy of some free help from us, so we contacted them back in August. We will be providing them with free internet access on our network, website hosting and going forward we will be there in the background, supporting them in any way we can.

We're not just about leased lines and co-location here at CCS and we do like to support other worthwhile causes whenever we can.

More information on the LS14 Trust can be found on their website here, and as ever feel free to look at our own site here.

UK Leased Lines News

It's been a while since out last Blog article on here, and it's not because we have been lazy - oh no, it is because we have been busy in all other area's of our business.

At the start of September we ran a special promotion on UK Leased Lines, which meant that we could supply a full 100Mbp/s fully managed leased line for only £500 per month.

Many of the people who enquired about this were also pleasantly surprised to learn that we were not charging for installation or hardware, and that it was a fully managed service.

As you can imagine, this offer was a runaway success which led to us extending it beyond the end of September and instead, until the end of October.

I have to admit that we were slightly fearful that the new change in pricing would make us less competitive than our rivals, but thankfully this is not the case and we still have some of the best leased line deal in the marketplace,which are all backed up by our excellent service and support reputation.

How does £600 per month for a full 100Mbp/s service sound?

More updates to follow and on a more regular basis on the run up to Christmas. In the meantime why not get in touch in the usual way, or have a look around this Blog and our company website?