Simple Anti-Spam How To Guide.

You will obtain the best results in reducing spam if you are disciplined and follow each step (or adhere to each rule) in this guide. There are no shortcuts. If you are serious about reducing spam, use this guide and work with your web developer on some of the points below (as indicated). (External links in this document will open in a seperate browser window).

1. Do not post your email address online. Online addresses are regularly harvested by spam bots.




2. If you must post your email address online, use a service such as Google's Gmail ( http:/mail.google.com ) or Yahoo's webmail (http://mail.yahoo.com ).




3. Instruct your web developer to place a contact form on your web site, not email addresses. This avoids spam bots harvesting email addresses. Ask your developer to use obfuscation methods when configuring the online form, which is VERY important, this way the address the form is being sent to is unreadable.




4. Ask your web developer to place a Honey Pot on your web site. ( http://www.projecthoneypot.org/about_us.php ) This will help poison spam databases as well as make your web site less palatable.




5. Switch your email client to one that is more spam aware. Mozilla's Thunderbird is the premier free client. ( http://www.mozilla.com/products/ ). Currently this client has the best spam filtering.
   
   
   
6. Do not respond to phishing type email as they are designed to gather data.
   
   
   
7. Do not have your email included in forwarded email jokes or chain email messages. These email messages and all their addresses eventually arrive at a computer that is insecure and the addresses may be added to a spam database.




8. When you receive email such as newsletters (for which you did not subscribe), do not use the "unsubscribe" link or email address. In this case "spammers" are often phishing for valid addresses. A reply of any kind simply flags your email address as valid, (because there was a live response).




9. Ask your web developer to "Blackhole" email sent to your domain if it does not contain a correct address. This avoids the "unroutable" email being sent to your default email address.




10. Do not use vacation auto-responses, again, this simply confirms the address as valid.
    
    
    
11. Be careful and selective of which email you choose to open. Here why: The majority of email sent by spammers is in HTML format (graphics and text). That email will download the pictures from their server and display them in your email message. In many cases the spammer will encode and reference each email message to an image. When that image gets downloaded, the email address it was encoded (referenced) with is confirmed as valid.
    
    
    
12. Make sure your hosting account makes available tools such as "Spam Assassin" ( http://wiki.apache.org/spamassassin/ )
    
    
    
13. For business operators and owners, consider using a separate, cheaper and smaller computer with linux installed to use for all online activity. Using a linux based computer avoids many of the inherent security issues that may be found within a windows based environment. Linux based computers have many more built in features to avoid spam.
    
    
    
14. In many severe cases, when beginning your mission to reduce and avoid spam, you may find it very beneficial to change your email address.

Again, following the guidelines above consistently will reduce your spam. In closing, I'm often asked the question "... but how did they get my email address?"

From companies or individuals who have your email address.
eMail harvesting software.
eNewsletter subscriptions where the terms of service indicate they may share your information.
Older versions of web browsers which are able to transmit your email address to servers.
Virus attacks that access your address book email.
Forwarded chainmail (or joke) email messages.
Hacking activities.
Online (and chat room) profiles.
Phishing (and seeing if they receive a response).
Purchasing email lists online.

Roger Wheatley often provides public seminars and presentations for businesses and organizations. If you would like to book a seminar for your business or organization, or are interested in learning more, please contact us.