4 Simple Do-it-yourself Solutions To Spam Email
If you are as sick and tired of spam showing up in your email and don’t want to spend a lot of dollars or do the programming for anti-spam programs, here are 4 easy and free suggestions to nearly eliminate the problem.
1. Never use just your first name, if it is common, for a moniker. Using mary@ or mark@ is like low hanging fruit to a spammer. They will mine for domains and then just pound them for the common names and see which ones don’t bounce. If they get through, grab your shorts because they will not stop, ever. They’ll even sell their success list to other spammers and the pile will then grow.
Solution: Hide your moniker using things like mary2945@ or mark9054@. They will never get to you or figure it out unless you post it where you shouldn’t. I simply us my first and last initial.
2. You go to numerous Web sites and use your email address for newsletters or information. They may or may not sell those address to others. If they do, you are dead meat. If you are unsure, there is a simple free way to get what you want without the risk.
Solution: Use www.spammotel.com. It is simple and free. You set up a log-in and put in your real email address. Use the service to generate a pseudo address moniker which will be something like 1Ak34982 @ spammotel.com. Any email sent to that pseudo address will be forwarded to you. If you want to cut it off, just go back to spammotel.com and eliminate the address and you have kept your real email address intact and protected.
3. If you have a business or personnel Web site with a contact form, your web designer may have placed a file like contact.php or contact.asp to do the processing of the request to forward it to you. Spam robots search for those files and then read the email addresses inside. Then guess what they do?
Solution: Contact your Web designer and ask them to change the name to something less obvious like 2957.php or np48ut.asp. It doesn’t matter what it is named as long as it is properly named in your online form. Otherwise, they mine it and your day goes real bad.
4. Do you have your email address displayed on your Web site somewhere? If so, you you might as well also send a registered letter to your favorite spammers and invite them to dinner. So how can you have your email on the site and not get spammed?
Solution: Disguise your emails with java script code. I have three simple methods that really work. Here is one that is “cut and paste”.
Input the following code for making a visible link to your email on a Web page. It can be seen only with your physical eyes and is clickable for sending email. Stupid spiders can’t read it:
Just replace “username” and “yourdomain.com” with what you use and presto! There are other variations you can use for even hiding them from being read by the eyes, yet clickable or showing to your eyes only and not clickable. Your Web designer should know how to do this. If not, show them the above code. If you are already being spammed it is only left for you to bury the address and create a new one. There is no other way.
Spending money on anti-spam programs will help but if you start with the above you may just be able to spend that money on a nice dinner a your favorite bistro.
John Clark is the President of Wow Web Works in Kalamazoo, MI. He is a Web Design, Marketing and SEO professional with a growing company. For obvious reasons his email address will not be shown here but you can contact him at http://www.wowwebworks.com Much more information and many more marketing ideas are available at his blog, http://www.wowwebworks.com/blog
Tags: anti-spam, email, java, javascript, spam