Email
Harvesting and reducing Spam to your Web Site:
Is
your in-box clogged with junk email messages from people
you don't know? Are you overwhelmed by unsolicited email
offering products or services you don't want? Are you being
exposed to objectionable messages? Are you being
targeted by illegal schemes and potential identify fraud?
According
to research done by the Federal Trade Commission (FTC)
one of the top locations that spammers get your email address
is from your own web site.
Their
study revealed:
- 86
percent of the email addresses posted to web pages received
spam. It didn't matter where the email addresses were
within the web page.
The
good news for web site owners is that we can minimize
the amount of spam that you receive without harming the
ability of your customers to contact you.
(866-486-7747) for more details. Refer
also to our reposted article on Phishing.
Spammers
use automated computer programs (called email harvesting
programs) that search throughout the Internet to compile,
capture, or otherwise "harvest" lists of email
addresses from web pages, newsgroups, chat rooms, and other
online destinations. Because these programs are automated,
spam can hit email addresses soon after they are first
made public and some addresses are picked up off of web
pages even
when they
aren't
visible to the eye. Other more
sophisticated spammers actually use spiders much like Google
does. These spiders or spam bots visit site after
site, collecting email addresses by the thousands. When
it comes to controlling these rogue spiders, the robots.txt
file simply
won't
get the job
done. In fact, most spam robots will ignore robots.txt.
Below are a few simple techniques that can help you
stop the less sophisticated spammers. If you would like
a higher degree of protection call us
(866-486-7747) as
we provide a number of proven techniques that are guaranteed to
reduce your spam.
Techniques
to reduce spam to your web site email addresses:
1.Use
hidden Javascripts to mask email addresses present on your
website.
One
of the weaknesses that spiders of all kinds suffer from
is an inability to process scripts. Adding
a small snippet
of Javascript in place of an email address effectively
renders the address invisible to spiders, while leaving
it accessible
to your visitors with all but the most primitive web browsers.
2.
Use a contact form instead of a "mailto:" tag.
Your
web site email address won't be displayed in this case
and won't be harvested by spam spiders. We offer scripts
that will work with ASP, Perl, or PHP and allow your
users
to
fill in a form, and send you an
email without compromising your site to email harvesters
and spammers. Another advantage of contact forms is that
it can enable you to deal with a higher volume of mail,
by allowing you to pre-sort different types of message.
This
is easily accomplished by creating a drop- down menu with
different options (e.g. customer service, billing, tech
support, etc.) that will populate the subject line of the
email message. Many contact forms are however not set up
correctly to prevent spam and actually have the TO: email
address present as a hidden text tag on the web page. We
can correct this so that you receive the full protection
a contact form should provide.
Basic
Tips to minimize Email Harvesting:
1. Consider "masking" your
email address. Masking involves putting a word
or phrase in your email address so that it will trick
a harvesting computer program, but not a person. For
example, if your email address is "johndoe@myisp.com," you
could mask it as "johndoe@spamaway.myisp.com." Be
aware that some newsgroup services or message boards
won't allow you to mask your email address and some harvesting
programs may be able to pick out common masks.
2. Use
a separate screen name for chatting. If you
use chat rooms, use a screen name that's not associated
with your email address. Consider using the screen name
only for online chat.
3. Set
up disposable addresses. Decide if you want
to use two email addresses - one for personal messages
and one for posting in public. Consider using a disposable
email address service that creates separate email addresses
that forwards to your permanent account. If one of the
disposable addresses begins to receive spam, you can
shut it off without affecting your permanent address.
4. Use
two email accounts. If you work for a business
or organization that wants to receive email from the
public, consider creating separate accounts or disposable
email addresses for that purpose, rather than having
an employee's address posted in public.
5. Use
a unique email address, containing both letters and numbers. Your
choice of email address may affect the amount of spam
you receive because some spammers use "dictionary
attacks" to email many possible name combinations
at large ISPs or email services, hoping to find a valid
address.
For
more advanced spam prevention web security solutions please
(866-486-7747) for more details.
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