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SPAM, or unwanted email messages, is one of the biggest
problems on the internet today.
In fact, some commentators believe that it could lead
to the whole internet grinding to a halt within a few
years.
Don't hold your breath waiting for government legislation
to reduce it either. The recently introduced CAN-SPAM
Act has resulted in an increase of unwanted email.
Where Does SPAM come From?
It used to come mainly from high speed servers, which
sent out uncountable millions of messages per day.
However, this is changing to millions
of "zombie" machines around the
world which, unknown to the
owner,
contain
a little
program which obeys instructions from a remote user
somewhere on the internet.
This user can send SPAM to this computer, and command
it to relay it to hundreds of addresses. SPAM distributed
in this manner is more difficult to fight.
If you are using an unprotected computer on the internet,
it will almost certainly have harmful programs on it
- and may be spewing out thousands of SPAM messages
without you even knowing about it.
Please check our software
page if you need
more information about this.
How Did the Spammers find My Email address?
If you have a website with email addresses on it, you'll
eventually receive SPAM (junk email). Guaranteed.
"Spam Bots" will pay a visit to your website
and collect email addresses they find there. These then
get put onto CD's for sale to spammers and unwary internet
newcomers who use them to send out millions of emails
- many of them to YOU.
Ever received a message trying to sell you insurance,
porn, or offers of $10 million from Nigeria? It's almost
certain that they got your address from one of these
CD's.
Hints To Reduce SPAM
Here's how you can reduce the chances
of your addresses being used by Spammers:
#1 - Reduce the number of email addresses
Don't put more email addresses on your website than
you really need. If you have 10 email addresses for
your domain, you'll get 10 times the spam - one for
each address.
#2 - Don't use your email address in forums or newsgroups
Forums and newsgroups are regularly harvested for email
addresses. Never use your ISP email address in newsgroups.
Just get a throwaway hotmail or yahoo email account,
and discard it when the spam levels get too big to handle.
If you have your own domain name and professional hosting
account, you can set up email aliases that can be bounced
back to the sender if the address starts receiving too
much spam. Then you just create another one. (Repeat
as often as required)
#3 - NEVER reply to an unsubscribe link in a SPAM message.
All this will do is confirm that the address is live,
and you'll start getting MORE SPAM.
However, Be aware that it is a requirement of Anti-Spam
legislation that commercial messages include a working
unsubscribe address.
This leads to the confusing situation of not knowing
which unsubscribe addresses will take you off the list,
and which ones will result ion you getting more mail.
I'd suggest that if in doubt, don't click on the unsubscribe
address. Hopefully you'll know the genuine newsletters
to which you have subscribed - and you should be OK
clicking their unsubscribe links.
#4 - Disguise Your Email Address
The simplest method is to make your website email addresses
invalid, with a clue so that humans can repair them.
For example, the address eric@webangel.com.au could
be disguised as:
eric @ webangel.com.au (space before and after the @
)
ericATwebangel.com.au
eric@webangel.com.auREMOVETHISBEFORESENDING
eric@REMOVETHISwebangel.com.au
The disadvantage of using these simple methods is
that you have to rely on someone to correct your intentional
mistake.
#5 - Hide your address with Unicode
E-Cloaker http://www.codefoot.com/software/ecloaker/index.html
This little utility converts your email addresses into
Unicode, which is very difficult for SPAM harvesters
to read - so they ignore it.
Just put your email address into this program, and
paste the generated unicode text into your web page.
Unicode is readable by all web browsers, and is our
current preferred method of hiding email addresses.
#6 - Hide your address with Java Script
This fragment of JavaScript code produces a link labelled "Send
Us An Email" that opens the users email program
when clicked, and will send a message to sales@webangel.com.au.
To change it to suit your needs, just alter the contents
of the address, hostname, and linktext entries.
(Please note that this will not work in browsers that
have javascript turned off)
<script language=javascript>
<
!--
var username = "sales";
var hostname = "webangel.com.au";
var linktext = "Send Us An Email";
document.write("<a href=" + "mail" + "to:" +
username +
"
@" + hostname + ">" + linktext + "</a>")
//-->
<
/script> |
