Email is becoming a standard means of communication between businesses, employees, and even friends. Many people have used the Internet and email for years, but the Internet still has thousands of new users every day. With cheap web hosting, free email, and a plethora of blogs, it's never been easier to carve the internet pie for yourself.
Whether you're a seasoned pro looking for a refresher course, or new to the web and email and want to get started quickly, here are some simple steps to reduce the amount of spam you send.
Do not choose an explicit e-mail address. Spammers create lists of email addresses based on common names. A typical list looks like this:
nick@yahoo.com, nick1@yahoo.com, nick2@yahoo.com, etc. If you create an email account with a less prominent combination of your name and a few numbers, you're more likely to end up with one. I can't find these lists.
Be careful with personal email addresses. Only give your personal email address to close and trusted friends and family. Only give your direct business email address to trusted clients and other contacts. That way, they will only use your address for legitimate business purposes.
Use different accounts for different functions. Create another alias with your company's domain name, or create a few free accounts from free email servers such as Hotmail, Yahoo!, Excite. Post on forums and discussion groups using accounts you don't care about. Use another to subscribe to newsletters and newsgroups. If any of these addresses are getting too spammy, delete the account and switch to another one.
Remove your email address from the website. Between blogs and cheap web spaces, everyone seems to have their own cyberspace. Before you link to email addresses on your website, remember that spammers have bots that collect these addresses. You can also look up addresses in plain text. Consider using a web-based form to communicate from your website, or put the address as a gif or jpeg.
Do not open spam, reply to spam, or purchase from spam. Interacting with spam in any of these ways shows spammers that your address is not only valid, but active. Please do not reply to the subject line with "unsubscribe" or click the link to remove your name from our database. Both are common tricks for verifying email addresses. Keep in mind that sending email is very cheap, so spamming can be profitable even if only a small percentage of people buy what you're selling. Do not support what you are trying to stop.
Finally, filter incoming emails with filter software. Even if you protect your email address carefully, you can still receive spam. Filtering software is usually cheap and effective, but there are some important features to consider in any filtering package.
Make sure you have control over what goes into your inbox and what gets deleted. The best programs create spam folders that you can review before permanently deleting emails. The software should block images from incoming emails. Many JPEG files included in spam actually hide code to notify the spammer when the email is viewed. Blocking images not only keeps objectionable content from appearing on your screen, but it also helps prevent spam in the future.
Choose software that is always up to date. As new spam techniques are developed and propagated, filtering software must keep pace.
While it's nearly impossible to keep spam out of your email address, you can reduce the time it takes to remove spam from your inbox by following these simple steps.
