How Can I Stop Getting Spam?

Are you getting too much spam? We all are, but if you're a webmaster the word spam takes on a whole new meaning.

It’s not uncommon for the luckiest of email users to receive a dozen or so spam messages each day, while those of us who aren’t so fortunate receive hundreds.

The casual home user tends to be more fortunate, so this article is devoted to those of us with one or more website because webmasters are getting hit by spam … and hit hard.

The reason … a website doesn’t do you much good if you don’t give potential customers a way to contact you, and that normally means posting an email address on your website, where it is vulnerable to email address harvesting tools used by spammers. Domain registration records are also a common source used by spammers.

In order to conduct business online you now need to sift through the endless barrage of offers for herbal viagra, pornography, pyramid schemes, and so on.

With such a large volume of spam to contend with, it’s likely you’ve lost sales due to missing important emails that simply floated away in this sea of spam. And there's no way to really calculate the cost of that lost business. If you've missed email then how can you ever know how much business you've lost?

If you want to solve the problem, you need to be proactive because the sad reality is that if you do nothing, it will only get worse until finally it reaches the point where your email account has become totally and completely unmanageable. Fortunately there are a few options available to you.

Securing Your Domain Registration Against Spammers

First let's address the whois database, which is a publicly accessible database in which your domain registration record is listed … and that includes your email address. It's not uncommon now for people to be spammed at a brand new email address within hours of registering a new domain.

Go Daddy http://www.godaddy.com is a domain registrar that now offers private domain registrations. At the time of writing this article, they are the only registrar who currently offers this service. Hopefully in time, other registrars will pick up on this idea and offer the service too.

With a private domain registration, which costs only a few dollars more than a regular registration, your contact information including your email address will not be publicly accessible in the whois database.

That’s guaranteed to cut down on spam quite significantly as this very important source of addresses that spammers use, will no longer provide your address to them.

If you don’t wish to obtain a private domain registration, then there is another option that will be equally effective. Set up a new email address that you use only for the purpose of providing registration information for your domain name. You can easily scan email sent to that address for messages from your registrar, and delete the rest without having to read it.

Securing Your Website Against Spammers

The other major source, and by far the biggest source of email addresses for spammers is of course the mailto links on your own website. Email address harvesting or extraction software as it’s known is cheap, easy to use, and readily available … and it’s very effective. That means there are a lot of spammers out there with easy access to your email address.

Chances are hundreds or even thousands of spammers using such software have already harvested your address. And what can you do about this? You need to provide a way for your customers to reach you by email, or you'll lose business. There are steps you can take to prevent your email address from being harvested and used by spammers though, while still providing legitimate visitors to your site with a way to email you.

One solution is to make all the mailto links on your site point to a form instead, which will still provide a means for people to send you email. Provided you use a CGI script that doesn’t require the address to be embedded within the form itself, you can shield your address from email address extractors.

If you don’t want to require people to fill out a form to email you from your website, then you can get a little more creative. It is possible to put a mailto link on your site that when clicked will still launch the sender’s email program, and start a new message with your address in the To field … but without having to embed your email address in the mailto link where spam software can snatch it. Click below to see an example of how it works.

http://thewebhostcompany.com/cgi-local/email.cgi

It looks like a normal URL, and there's clearly no email address anywhere in the link, but when clicked, instead of loading a web page in your browser as you may have expected, your email program opens up.

How’s that possible you might ask? Simple. A little magic with CGI using Perl or PHP will do the trick. A free copy of a script that does this is bundled with Postmaster Pro, available at http://www.postmasterpro.com which is discussed below.

What About Spammers Who Already Have My Address?

So far we’ve discussed a few fairly simple techniques designed to prevent spammers from obtaining your email address in the first place. But, how do you deal with the spam you’re already getting? Your address is already out there. The solution is to either block or filter.

For either, you'll need software. For blocking, I recommend Postmaster Pro. If you prefer to filter then Spam Assassin is highly recommended. Both run on the server, so there is no need to download spam before filtering it out. That's a huge time saver if you're not yet on a high-speed connection. It also makes it a bit less likely you'll end up downloading a virus since email from untrusted senders, i.e. spammers will be significantly reduced.

Spam Blocking Software

Postmaster Pro which is available at http://www.postmasterpro.com takes a novel approach to blocking spam. It only allows email to be delivered after people who’ve sent you email have been placed on an approved sender list. But the interesting thing is that people who send you email can put themselves on your approved list. This is done simply by clicking a link in an email that automatically gets sent to them the first time they send email to you, which is perfect for those of us who don’t know in advance whom we should put on the approved list, i.e. if you’re running a business online. It also makes building and maintaining such a list very simple.

Given the fact that spammers normally use invalid return addresses, and those who do use valid return addresses seldom read email that's sent there, let alone respond to it (they receive thousands of failed delivery notifications, complaints, remove requests, and autoresponder messages every time they do a mailing) … it’s a very effective technique with no chance of blocking legitimate email, as is the case with filtering.

Spam Filtering Software

For those who would prefer to filter ... Spam Assassin is perhaps the best option. It is available at http://www.spamassassin.org. Once you have Spam Assassin installed, it will provide you with very powerful and flexible filtering tools. Spam Assassin is a mature product, having been around for quite some time. If you’re going to filter, Spam Assassin is about as good as it gets.

As with any filter though, you do run the risk of missing legitimate email from time to time. There really isn't a good way to tell how often this is happening unless you want to read all the email that gets filtered out, which negates the whole point of filtering. If you set your filters permissively enough though, you should be reasonably safe. For the first month or so after installing any filter, you should continue to read every single email in order to make sure it isn't set too restrictively to allow legitimate email through.

By using the techniques mentioned in this article, you can take back your mailbox, and dramatically reduce, if not eliminate spam.

About The Author

Sean Proske is the CEO and founding partner of thewebhostcompany.com which has provided reliable and affordable hosting since 1996.
www.thewebhostcompany.com
mailto:info@thewebhostcompany.com
sproske@thewebhostcompany.com

Avoid, Shun, Thwart, Prevent, and then Filter Spam

Email is rapidly becoming the standard means of communication among businesses, associates, and even friends. While many people have now been using the internet and email for years, there are thousands of new users on the internet each day. With inexpensive web hosting, free email services, and the blog burst upon us, getting your own slice of the internet pie has never been easier.

Whether you’re a seasoned professional looking for a refresher course, or you’re new to the internet and email and want to start off right, here are some easy steps to follow to reduce the amount of spam you receive.

Don’t choose an obvious email address. Spammers will generate lists of email addresses based on common names. A common list would be something like: nick@yahoo.com, nick1@yahoo.com, nick2@yahoo.com, etc. If you create an email account with less obvious combinations of your name plus some numbers, chances are better that you won’t find your way onto one of these lists.

Treat your personal email address with care. Only give out your personal email address to close friends and family who you trust. Give your direct business email only to clients and other contacts you trust to only use your address for legitimate business purposes.

Use different accounts for different functions. Create different aliases with your business’s domain name or create a few free accounts from free email servers like Hotmail, Yahoo!, Excite, etc. Use one account that you don’t care about for posting to forums or discussion groups. Use another to subscribe to newsletters and newsgroups. When any of these addresses starts to get spammed too heavily, simply delete the account and switch to a different one.

Remove your email address from your website. Between blogs and cheap web space, it seems everyone has their own piece of cyberspace. Before you put a link to your email address on your site, remember that spammers have bots that harvest these addresses. They will even find addresses printed in plain text. Consider using a web-based form for communication from you website, or place your address as a gif or jpeg.

Do not open, respond to, or purchase from spam. Interacting with spam in any of these ways indicates to the spammer that not only is your address valid, it’s also active. Do not respond with “unsubscribe” in the subject line, or click on any links to remove your name out of the database, as both of these are common ploys to confirm your email address. Remember, because sending email is so inexpensive, spamming can be profitable even if only a small percentage of people purchase what they’re selling. Don’t support what you’re trying to stop.

Finally, Filter you incoming email using filtering software. Even if you guard your email address religiously, you’ll likely still receive spam. Filtering software is usually inexpensive and effective, but there are some important features to consider with any filtering package:

• Make sure you can control what comes to your inbox and what gets deleted. The best programs create a spam folder for you to review before permanently deleting emails.

• The software should block images from incoming emails. Many jpegs in spam actually hide code that notifies the spammer when the email is viewed. Blocking images will not only keep offensive content off your screen but will also help prevent more spam in the future.

• Choose software that provides you with updates - as new spamming techniques are created and proliferated, filtering software should keep up.

While eliminating spam from coming to your email address is nigh unto impossible, following these simple steps will mean you’ll have to spend less time deleting spam from your inbox, giving you more time for the important things of life – like reading this article.
About the author:
Nick Smith is a client account specialist with 10x Marketing - More Visitors. More Buyers. More Revenue. Find more information about how to filter spam at ContentWatch, Inc.
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What Spam Blocker is Best For You?

With the number of spam filtering solutions increasing each week it's getting tougher for consumers to make informed choices in their purchases.
There are 3 basic types of spam blocker:
1. Integrated
2. Standalone
3. Online

We'll look at each type of spam filter and at the end you should be able to decide what spam filter is right for you.
Integrated spam filters
This type of spam filtering software is the most common. Once installed it sits "on top" of your existing email software and installs a new set of buttons into your email software. In future when you collect
email you'll see options for marking email as Spam, marking the email as Not Spam, Bounce the email back to sender, etc. The description and position of these buttons varies from one product to the next but their purpose remains the same.


Most integrated spam filters automatically place suspected junk email into a separate folder on your PC for you to review or
delete later on.


The newer integrated spam filters are also "intelligent". They can basically learn the difference between what is
spam and what is not and delete the junk email you don't want.


The most popular integrated spam filters are:

iHate Spam
Spambully
Spam Inspector
Integrated spam filters are most popular amongst people who want a one click solution to collecting their personal email and filtering junk email at the same
time.
Advantages:
One click solution.
Disadvantages:
Software specific. Some work with Outlook and Outlook Express only.
Standalone spam filters
These are less common than their integarted counterparts but that doesn't make them any less useful. A standalone spam filter is basically a separate piece of software installed on your PC that you use to check your email for spam.
Standalone filters have the big advantage of being able to preview your email on the mail server before it's downloaded to your PC. This one single feature has the
huge benefit of allowing you to just download the email that you want as opposed to downloading all of your email, including the spam, and then sorting through it.
Using a standalone spam filter is a little more work simply because it's a separate piece of software that you have to run
before you open up your email software. Most standalone filters do allow you to configure them so that your standard email
application is opened once you've chosen what spam to filter. This suits some people and not others.
The most popular standalone spam filter is:
Mailwasher Pro
Advantages:
Doesn't rely on specific email applications to work properly.
Disadvantages:
Two step process. Load standalone filter and then your email application.
Online spam filters
There are really two types of online spam filters. One is for business use and one is for home use. A typical example of
a business type product is iHate Spam server edition where the software deletes junk email directly from the mail server before the end user even sees it. Large companies employ this type of technology.
Home users will be using Spam Arrest or similar. Spam Arrest offers an inventive solution to spam whereby any email sent to
the users account has a challenge request sent back to it which the sender must authenticate. The automatic junk email software used by spammers can't currently deal with this type of response.
Any failure to authenticate the challenge email results in the junk email being left to die in cyberspace. A user is authenticated with Spam Arrest only once for security just to make sure the software
doesn't become a nuisance.
The most popular online spam filter is:
Spam Arrest
Advantages:
Users are guaranteed to only receive the email that they want or requested.
Disadvantages:
Any techncial problems with the Spam Arrest server and you have no defense against spam.
Now you've seen what spam filtering options are available to you just ask yourself which one suits you most. If you're still not sure drop by www.spam-site.com and check out our product reviews - we have something for everyone.
About the author:
This article was provided courtesy of Spam-Site.com which reviews and tests spam blockers for the business and end user.

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Let The Email Wars Begin

Things just got a lot hotter in the hyper-competitive world
of online email providers.

In response to Google's announcement that their soon-to-be-
launched "Gmail" service will offer users 1 gigabyte of
email storage, Yahoo! announced an upgrade of their free
email service to allow users 100MB of free email storage
along with other enhancements.

Microsoft's Hotmail will surely also announce a free
upgrade in email storage space.

On the surface it might just appear like a simple case of
one-upmanship, but it actually represents major forces
digging in online and preparing to do battle.

It appears Yahoo! simply wanted to take the issue of email
storage space off the table as a consideration for users as
to which email service to choose.

Google enjoyed considerable media and public attention over
the past few weeks with the media marveling at how Google
intended to give hundreds of megabytes more space to its
users than Yahoo! or Hotmail.

With this move, Yahoo! made storage a "non-issue," but the
real war has only just begun.

Email ranks as the number one most popular online activity
according to virtually any survey you care to read.

When people go online, they spend the single biggest chunk
of their time sending, receiving, and reading email.

Online email providers understand that eyeballs on a page
looking at advertising and responding to offers is what
makes them money.

By increasing loyalty among email users in order to
repeatedly draw them back to the same website (often
several times a day), email service providers like Yahoo!,
Hotmail and Google can keep people looking at revenue
generating ads.

Despite the best efforts of government regulators, private
organizations, software filters, ISP's and others, over
half of all email sent online rates as unsolicited
commercial email (SPAM).

Besides storage space, Google, Yahoo! and Hotmail will
start claiming that their spam filters rate better than the
rest.

These online powerhouses hope to attract users with the
promise of cutting down and even eliminating the avalanche
of get-rich-quick, pornography, and ink-jet cartridge
offers (among others) that bombard virtually anyone with an
email account more than 15 minutes old.

This will, however, lead to another problem that many of
them won't talk about, which involves filtering legitimate
email as spam.

Unfortunately, the sword cuts both ways on this issue.

So where does it all end? Never! Hotmail will enter the
fray with expanded storage capacity as well as the promise
of less spam and a more "friendly" interface to make your
email life even easier.

Yahoo! and Hotmail will most likely copy Google and start
serving context sensitive advertising based on the content
of each email message as it get viewed.

Privacy advocates will weigh in to claim that all of the
filtering and serving of ads based on an email message's
content violates our rights to privacy and heralds the
arrival of "Big Brother."

But all this jockeying for position and enticing users from
one email service to another actually represents a great
boon for the average Internet user.

It will force three of the Web's biggest players to wake up
and improve their services after 2 or 3 years of "business
as usual" and we can all expect a few valuable innovations
to result.


About the author:
Jim Edwards, a.k.a. TheNetReporter.com, is a syndicated newspaper
columnist, nationally recognized speaker, author, and web developer.
Owner of nine (9) successful e-businesses as well as a professional
consulting firm, Jim's writing comes straight off the front lines
of the Internet and e-commerce.

Simple "Traffic Machine" brings Thousands of NEW visitors to
your website for weeks, even months... without spending a
dime on advertising! ==>www.turnwordsintotraffic.com
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The Hidden Dangers of HTML Email

As a veteran Internet user, I can honestly say I remember a time when HTML email was not possible. Back then RTF wasn't available either and for that matter, email programs did not even wrap lines for you or allow file attachments.

Today however, I receive a steady and annoying stream of email in all shapes, colors and sizes. Almost all promotional advertisements and many newsletters come in Html format.

Now, Spam is annoying, Spam in droves even more so, but Spam with "twirlygigs" is intolerable -- and dangerous. HTML is for websites. I visit them all the time and enjoy their various amusements. Email however, is a tool. A communications method used for getting work done. I get plenty of regular email, hundreds of pieces a day usually, due to the support, consulting and writing services I provide. If all of those emails are in HTML format then I'm stuck looking at potentially hundreds of web pages and thousands of graphics.

HTML email takes extra time to download, and for me it takes extra time to read. You see I don't trust HTML email. I've coded many websites in my day and I know that scripts can be hidden in the pages. Now when you couple that fact with the daily news about viruses and worms being sent, well that's just downright scary, so I do not allow my email program to automatically open HTML formatted email. Now I rarely use Outlook and Express (sorry Microsoft but they feel just a bit too dangerous to me now days) however I'd rather be safe than sorry no matter which email program I use. So, I have my email software configured to show all HTML messages as attachments.

Having the email converted to an attachment allows me to immediately see if there are any other files included with the message. And let me tell you, this has saved my butt time after time! I've lost count of how many times I've gotten email with the HTML attached, and malicious code, worms and viruses attached right next to it. If my email program was configured to "conveniently" display HTML as a web page, then a lot of those attached files would have opened on their own and done who knows what to my system.

So, if you receive a lot of email yourself, be careful what you allow to come in. If you run a newsletter or Email update service of any kind, please be courteous and at least ASK before sending HTML formatted email. And when you do have permission to send HTML email, don't include heavy graphics, scripts or other file attachments.

Text may not be as glamorous, but it's a heck of a lot safer and much easier for your readers to glance through.


About the author:
(c) 2002 Kathy Burns.

Want a Fully Operational Web Site Business in Less than 15 Minutes? Check Out The TurnKey Niche Profit Sites! www.GuruGazette.com/TurnKey-Profits/

This article is provided courtesy of The Guru Gazette Niche Marketing Blog - www.GuruGazette.com- You may freely reprint this article on your website or in
your newsletter provided this courtesy notice and the author name and URL remain intact.
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Email Marketing: Affordable Internet Marketing Technique

Email marketing is labeled as a killer method when it comes to effective low-cost Internet marketing endeavors. This is because it is the most widely-used and has the best reputation in bringing targeted traffic to websites. It is used to stay in touch with your customers or prospective customers, send out invitations, or make special offers.

It's as easy as writing an e-mail that may be in a form of a newsletter or a plain announcement, and sending that to as many targeted recipients as possible. However, there's an ideal way of going about it. Email marketing is not just about writing any email that you will be sending to anybody. To clarify that, here are some simple tips in doing email marketing the best way possible.

1. Join the "Can Spam" campaign.

Email marketing is not at any rate tantamount to spamming. You are not supposed to send information that your email list will not have any valuable use for.

2. Make your email list open it.

Your email might get lost together with the hundreds of emails that inbox owners are confronted with everyday. Improve your subject line by using extra white space creatively, adding text symbols, starting each word with a capital letter, asking compelling questions, not making any unbelievable claims, and not using the word FREE.

3. Keep it real.

Not including any too good to be true statements is not only applicable to your subject line. Your email content must never embody any promise your business can't keep. Make your offer genuinely of value to your recipients.

4. Don't go too low.

If you inform your customers regarding discounts, minimal discounts are not that effective compared with substantial discounts. But never offer discounts that are lower than your profit. It will defeat the purpose of this email marketing effort.

5. Make it eventful.

It's not about contradicting the advice that you should keep an email short and sweet. This tip is on including seminars, conferences and other events in your email. Businesses that require training benefit much from this method. With these RSVP-requiring emails, repetition is important. Just make sure that an ample interval is considered before sending out a reminder email.

6. Post news.

Sending newsletters and postcards provides useful information for your subscribers. These are the best forms of reaching out to your customers or prospects. You should keep the information short, simple and direct to the point for this feat to be effective.

With these simple ways of going about your email marketing endeavor, your business will prosper in no time.
About the author:
Little Known Minnesota Man Making Six Figures Per Year Online, From the Comfort of Home, Reveals His Top Internet Money-Makers. www.push-button-online-income.com
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Six Tips to Get Rid of Spam Email

1. Ignore Spam Email

Do not open an unsolicited email. Spammers are just playing a numbers game. They simply send out like a million emails and hope that at least a third of them stick.

Spammers try to gather as many email addresses as they can. They don’t even know if any of the addresses are active. It is when you answer them that they know whether or not it is an active account that is checked often.

2. Do NOT Click On the Unsubscribe Links

It is natural for you to want to click on the link at the bottom of the email that promises that you can be taken off of their email list, but do not think for a second that this is what happens.

When you click on the “click here if you wish to stop receiving these emails” link, the spammers simply change the name that sends it to you. All you have proven is that you are indeed opening and reading emails.

3. Use Various Email Addresses

Since it is unavoidable to receive spam, set up a “dummy” email address. You would use this address when you register for newsletters, order products, enter contests, and register your new software.

You would like to avoid using you primary email address, or the email address that you receive from your ISP for things like that. This is the email that you would give your contacts or “safe people”.

4. Don’t Post Your Address

If you have a web site, avoid posting your email address in your “contact me” section.
Since spammers scan through web sites and look for the @ symbol, write your email address with the word “at” instead.

That makes it a bit more difficult for spammers to find your email address because they use special software that searches for the symbol, and not just the words.

5. Do Not Purchase from Spam

The absolute worst thing that you could do is buy something from spam. Just imagine how perfect the world would be if everyone gathered together to refuse to buy things that were offered in an unsolicited email. Spammers would be out of business the moment that they realized that they weren’t getting anywhere.

6. Beware of Free Trial Software

For every legitimate download, there are plenty that are designed to get your personal information, which will eventually lead you to more spam. This is particularly popular from free trial software as well as free software.

Spammers use this method in a similar manner as they would use a gift promotion and contest sign in. That is one of the most beneficial ways for spammers to get you on their hook.

About the author:
Visit Stop Spam Center for the latest news and information about how to block spam. www.stopspamcenter.info
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