Got SPAM? Stop SPAM.
October 3 , 2006
If you have a Web Site, or your e-mail address is listed on one, you probably get SPAM … lots of it. One of the most effective ways to drastically reduce SPAM is to hide your e-mail address from SPAMmers who scour the internet collecting addresses. The technique is simple: Change your address, and don’t publish it. But if you run a business, you still need to be accessible to your customers. So how do you balance the need to communicate with your customers, with the need to hide your self from SPAMmers? Read on … there’s help.
If you use the Internet, you’re probably familiar with SPAM – unsolicited e-mails. SPAM is the electronic equivalent of Junk Mail. You never asked for it and chances are, you don’t want it. It’s not only annoying, unwanted e-mail can contain computer viruses which in turn can cripple your computer.
The bad news is, there’s no way you can stop the spammers. They collect all the e-mail addresses they can get their hands on and send … send … send. The best we can do is to deal with it. Many people have SPAM blockers which can help with the amount of SPAM you have to sift through. But you’re still receiving it, and your computer is still bogged down with it. It’s still a pain.
The good news is that you can greatly reduce the amount of SPAM you RECEIVE. In Junk Mail terms, if you were to move and not leave a forwarding address, you’d eliminate all junk mail you were receiving. In Internet terms, if you change your e-mail address, any SPAM sent to your old address would never reach you. And if you took care to keep your new e-mail address private, you’d greatly reduce the amount of SPAM you receive in the future. And that’s the idea. If you can afford to abandon your old e-mail address in favor of a new one, you’re home free.
However, The first step to reducing and/or stopping SPAM is to understand why you get it. You don’t want to change your address, only to have it flooded with more SPAM. You must learn to protect your e-mail address. After you change your behavior, so that you limit the exposure of your address, then you can make the change and reap the rewards of a clean inbox.
E-mail lists
When you sign up for a service or purchase something on-line, you often are required to submit your e-mail address along with whatever other information the service/merchant requests. Once in their database, they may send follow-up mail. The service/merchant can also collect your address and sell it (along with others) to a third party. The third party can often then do whatever they want with your address, include send SPAM.
When you submit your e-mail address on-line, be sure to read the service/merchant’s Privacy Policy. If they don’t have one, you’re leaving yourself wide open. If they do have one, read it thoroughly. If you’re going to do business with them, you at least need to be informed. That much is YOUR choice.
Web site visibility
Do you have a web site? Got a Blog? Do you publish information on the Internet? Often these postings contain your e-mail address, or an alias that’s pointed toward you. The most common example among web site owners is something like info@mydomain.com, which is ultimately sent to your mailbox.
Spammers use web crawlers (much like search engines do) to crawl around the Internet. Instead of collecting information, however, they are looking only for e-mail addresses. The crawlers build up databases of e-mail addresses very quickly. If your e-mail address is visible on a web site in a form that can be read by crawlers, it’s a given that you will ultimately receive SPAM.
If you are posting (as in a Blog or a Forum) make sure they are doing something to mask your e-mail address from the crawlers. If they are not, you can choose not to post to that particular place, opting instead for a site who’s practices protect your address.
If you own/operate a web site, there are ways to hide your address from the crawlers while still keeping it visible to browsers. If your address were displayed as a graphic, it would be invisible to crawlers, but visible to browsers. And if the link were to a submission form instead of a mail program, that effectively hides your address from the crawlers. For an example of how this works, see http://www.sewellcomputer.com and look at the tag line. The address is a graphic that links to a form, not to e-mail. If you don’t manage your own site, certainly your webmaster or ISP should be able to help you with this.
Hide your address
If you operate a Web Site, you can e-mail address aliases. Aliases add a level of separation that gives you flexibility to change your e-mail address without loosing your identity. Let’s say your private e-mail address is bob@mymail.com, and your Web Site is www.MySite.com. You can create an alias like info@mysite.com that just forwards your mail to bob@mymail.com. The SPAMers and e-mail collectors would learn the name info@mysite.com, leaving your real address out of the SPAM lists. If you find you are receiving too much SPAM, just change your alias to something like welcome@mysite.com and abandon info@mysite.com. Instantly the SPAM is gone.
Use a different e-mail alias for in-print advertisement
In-print advertisement is not searchable by SPAM engines, and is therefore relatively safe. If you change the address on your web site, and it’s the same as the one you use in print, you have a problem … abandoning the address makes your in-print address ineffective. But if your in-print alias is different from the one you use on your site, it frees you to change your e-mail alias on your site whenever SPAM gets to be too much.
Find out which address is receiving the SPAM
Many of us have many aliases. If you have a business, often something like “info@mydomain.com” is forwarded to another address like “myaddress@yahoo.com”. It’s important to understand which address is receiving the SPAM, because that’s the one you want to eliminate.
You’ll need to dig into several SPAM messages in order to see who the message was sent “To:”. Check the message headers and look for a line beginning “To:”. Take note of the address to which the SPAM is being sent because these are the addresses you’ll eventually discontinue.
Viruses & spyware
Like SPAM is unwanted e-mail, Viruses and Spyware are unwanted (sometimes destructive) programs that get loaded on your computer. Some of these programs can read into your address book to send SPAM or collect addresses.
Virus and Spyware Protection Software is critical to not only protecting your computer and data, but it can help keep e-mail addresses out of the hands of spammers. Make sure your virus and spyware protection software is up to date and functioning properly. If you’re not sure, contact a computer specialist who can help.
Change your address
Changing your e-mail address can take time. You should set up a second (new) address, and check both mailboxes while you proceed to change your address.
Changing an e-mail address means abandoning your address, possibly one you’ve been using for years. All your friends, acquaintances, and business associates have it. You need to let them know that your address is changing, so they can continue to communicate with you.
If you have any on-line subscriptions (banking, forums, etc) you may need to change your profile information so you will continue to receive potentially important notifications.
If you are in business, this may mean changing in-print advertising. If your e-mail address is published in the Yellow Pages, you may not be able to abandon the address right away because the Yellow Pages only change once per year. The important thing is to identify all the places you NEED your address to be updated and correct. Remember to use a different e-mail alias in-print than you use on your web site.
Once you’ve changed your address everywhere that’s important, getting rid of SPAM is as simple as shutting off the offending address. If SPAM continues to come in, it will not land on you, because you’re no longer picking it up.
Then breath. Your Inbox will thank you.
Sewell Computer
Phone: 856-218-0943 • Fax: 856-218-0944
