The Scourge of Spam
by Dan Burbank
You're online because you want people to get in touch with you. You've got something to say, something to sell, something to offer. Come one, come all. Your email address is on display. You're easy to get in touch with.
You might be disappointed when the majority of people who try to reach you via your web site offer nothing but shady business opportunities, pornography and herbal viagra. If your email address is online, in fact even if you just have your own domain, you're an easy target for spam.
Despite the CAN-SPAM Act and increased public hostility against it, the tidal wave of spam isn't likely to subside anytime soon. But shutting down your site or removing your contact information isn't an option. Chances are your inbox is actually a mixed bag of bogus messages and legitimate client contact.
Why so much spam?
First, understand why having a web site can generate so much spam. Spammers are harvesting email addresses. They have software programs that poke around the web looking for publicly displayed email addresses (they'll even find them inside your site's code) and posting them to their list. Another strategy relies on the fact that most web hosts bounce any address @ a domain to the domain's owner. So they can literally add asdfjkl@yourdomain to their list and know it'll bounce to someone.
What's a frustrated site owner to do?
Ultimately it's a battle you'll have to fight on two fronts. The first front is on your web site, taking steps to reduce the harvesting of your site's email addresses. The second front is in your inbox, filtering and blocking the messages that do get through.
Your Site
The low tech. Try thwarting those spam-bots by posting your email on your web site as a small image or spelling it out in a way that only a person could read: bob AT thisdomain.com. Don't hotlink this address with a "mail to" tag and your address is less likely to be harvested.
A word of caution, if your site's audience consists of a lot of inexperienced Internet users this method may only create confusion among them. The other drawback is that if this address has already been harvested, changing its appearance on your site probably won't reduce the amount of spam coming in.
The form. Creating a contact form is another viable way to protect your email address. Though depending on how your form is designed, there's no guarantee that your address won't be harvested out of the script. Spammers have also figured how to write scripts against some common configurations of forms (ask a blogger about comment spam).
Encode it. There are utilities that will encrypt your email address inside a javascript. This means users will be able to get your address, spam bots won't.
You Inbox
The dumpster inbox. One way to steer clear of the spam is to direct all email coming from your web site to a separate inbox, perhaps a free one from Yahoo or Hotmail. This method will require you to go "dumpster diving" as often as you deem necessary based on the volume of email your site generates to pick the treasures from the trash. You can then take the quality messages to your primary email account and correspond from there.
Wash it. MailWasher has become a popular method of separating good and bad email as it comes in. It allows you to create friends list and black list in order to better manage incoming mail. You can try it out for free.
Upgrade your client. Try moving from web-based email to POP boxes, which will allow you to send and receive messages from Outlook, Outlook Express or Eudora. The advantage to running one of these clients is that you can create custom rules and folders that can help you manage your email more effectively. These rules tell the software to put every message from Harvey.Jones@yourclient.com in your "Good Inbox" while directing any message containing the word "viagra" in the subject line to your spam folder. Then you'll also have the option to add additional software like Norton Internet security which will also help filter out the spam.
Chances are you won't completely eliminate spam from your inbox. But using some combination of these strategies can clean up your inbox and allow you to spend less time wading through the junk.
30.04.2007. 23:55
This article hasn't been commented yet.
Write a comment
* = required field