How much spam email are you getting? 88.6% of all email is spam. I will have the Spam, Spam and more spam, how do you stop it? The answer is you cannot but you can make it so it does not affect your life
Here are some tricks and tips to help filter out the spam.
Spam tip one. Somebody is using your email address to send out spam emails. It is easy for a spammer to forge your email address in the “from line” in an email. The problem is that people get this email and respond back to you to stop it. Then the deluge of hundreds of wrong email addresses bounce back to you. How do you stop it, well you can not but you can put a major damper on it by using a SPF record (v=spf1 a mx ip4:207.154.28.93/24 –all). This is a text record that goes in your DNS setting at your hosting company. This record tells the other Internet email servers that if email is sent to it and it did not come from the IP address in the SPF record then it is a forgery. If that is the case then the email server rejects it. The SPF record above will only work if you have email with Squiggout.com. Please consult your hosting company to install a SPF in your DNS records for their servers.
Spam tip two. Use spam blocking tools and software offered to you by your hosting company. Contact the hosting companies support at abuse@your hosting company.com and submit emails to their spam-control people who can improve their anti-spam filters by adding or blocking address, IP addresses and or domain names all together. If you have spam filters turn them on at your hosting company, on your network and your computer. The more filters the greater the changes you can block spam.
Spam tip three: Stop posting your e-mail address on public forums, newsgroups or website. It is estimated that 96% of all junk e-mail is caused by a person publicly disclosing his or her e-mail address. There are many robots and scripts that automatically scan websites for e-mail addresses. Once they have your email they will use it to spam everybody.
Spam tip four: Create a username that has nothing to do with an email addresses you have. Chat rooms like Yahoo Chat or IRC – spammers or spambots are actively mining in popular chat rooms like AOL and Yahoo chats, where e-mail addresses can be correctly guessed by using the username of a chat room visitor.
Spam tip five: If you need to fill out forms that ask for your e-mail address use a disposable email address. This is an email address that is used once or just for that website, I use the website name @my domain .com this way I can track if they sold it or just delete the email address if I start getting spam.
Spam tip six: Make a alternate email account for different purposes or groups (Examples: one for your friends, one for stores sites, one for your financial, etc.) Then set all those alternate email addresses to forward the mail to your main account so that you don’t have to check multiple accounts. If you receive spam through one of your alternate emails, you can trace it to one of your alternate addresses and simply delete that alternate email account. This allows you to track which alternate email returns the most spam and you can be more selective in the future. There are also many companies out there that offer on the fly alternate emails. This means you can make up an email address on the spot and the email system will accept it.
Spam tip Seven: Report Spam to: spam@uce.gov this is the spam box for the Federal Trade Commission (FTC). Email sent to this box is investigated. If it is indeed spam, the original sender can be charge $500 per email. The more mail they get from different users but same spammer, the more likely there will be an investigation..
Spam tip eight: Never give out your real email address to anybody this way you have control over it. Also make your real email address my real email@your domain name.com this way it can not be guessed.
Spam tip nine: Never put an email address on a website without protection. Spammers and spambots are actively mining your website to find emails in the code, tags or in form data.
Spam tip ten: Do not respond to a spam email, click on a link or down load any pictures from the email. This only feeds the fire and you will regret doing it. The simple thing is to just delete it after you send it to the FTC.
Spam is a major problem for hosting companies and their clients but with these few simple tips you can “can your spam”.
These are some excellent tips. Most are common sense, but I had not considered the chat room user name. That is an excellent point.
Also the disposable email addresses. I am associated with a site called Soodonims.com which is a powerful tool in keeping Spam at bay. It hides your real email identity, and allows you to easily dispose of the Alias at will.
I invite you to try it.
Lewis, Thank you for your comment. This was written for people who do not understand how email works and was published by Success Magazines LTD. They are common sense to you, I and everybody else that is Internet savvy. Squiggout as a company is looking at Zero spam systems. I will look at your website for more information.
Squiggout uses spam assassin, SFP records and block massive amounts of IP and email addresses at our firewalls and yet a few get through. Even just protecting this blog is a full time job. Somebody is always trying to post some stupid link. (FYI: for that person(s) from *@mail.ru) It will never get posted so just stop.