More Anti-Spam Tips

Spam Vaccine can dramatically reduce the amount of spam you receive. But spammers have other ways of finding you. Once you’ve vaccinated your Web site, there are some other steps you can take to reduce spam.

Rotate your email addresses

If your Web site has been online for a while, your email address has probably already been harvested by spambots. Now that your site is vaccinated, this would be a good time to change your email address. You could change info@yourdomain.com to productinfo@yourdomain.com and then stop using the spam-compromised address.

If possible, it is a good idea to configure your old email address(es) to bounce a message back to the sender advising the sender to look for your new email address on your Web page. Provide a link to your new, Spam-Vaccinated Web page so customers and friends can easily pick up your new email address.

If a spambot receives a bounced email, they’ll get the link to the Web page, but they won’t be able to do anything with it since the addresses on it are Spam-Vaccinated.

Ounce of Prevention

Prevention is still the best policy. Don’t give out your email address on public discussion groups or bulletin boards. Spambots gather email addresses from those places too. Instead of posting your email address, give people a link to your Spam-Vaccinated Web page.

Another common place where spammers pick up email addresses is from the WHOIS records where domain name registrations are stored. You can get a free email address and use that for your domain name registration. Then use a filter in your email software to filter out all messages that don’t originate from your registrar.

Don’t use more email addresses than you actually need. Two email addresses can double your spam because the spammers will send to both of them.

Publicize department addresses instead of personal addresses. Don’t publicize the address of the person who handles orders. Publicize orders@yourdomain.com. If the spammers get hold of it, it’s usually easier to change a department address than a personal address.

If you have a wildcard email address (where anything@yourdomain.com will reach you) you may want to disable it. Some spammers send email to randomly chosen usernames. If your domain will forward that email to you, it just means more spam.

Pound of Cure

Once the spammers start sending you email, you can try to filter it out with your email software. This solution is tedious and troublesome. You’ll have to do some filtering but it’s far better to try to avoid the spam in the first place.

There is one filter that is easy to create and can eliminate a lot of spam. Check for mail that does not include your email address in the To: or CC: fields. This is a common tip-off for spam.

You can also create filters for common subjects, keywords and come-ons. This can be labor-intensive, but if you start getting many copies of the same spam, it may be your only hope.

Remember that any time you filter messages, you shouldn’t just delete the messages. Transfer them to a separate folder where you can review them. Even the best filter will occasionally mistake desirable mail for spam, so you still have to scan the spam folder to make sure there’s not something important in there. Unfortunately, the spam subject lines are sometimes the worst part of the whole message and it’s a bummer even to have to look at them.

Getting drastic

There are other spam solutions, still more drastic. They are usually not appropriate for any email address you use for business, since they can result in email being rejected or sent back to senders for confirmation.

A spam solution shouldn’t make it more difficult for people to communicate with you. Don’t let spam turn you into an electronic recluse. Just be careful about how you publicize your email address, Spam-Vaccinate all your Web pages, exercise some basic caution, and you can easily eliminate most spam.

Other resources

To learn more about the fight against spam,check out the following sites:

Coalitian Against Unwanted Commercial Email (the legislative fight)
spam.abuse.net (anti-spam ideas)