Spam and What to Do about It
Why Do I Get So Much Spam?
You don't have to have visited "dubious" sites in order
to get spam. But if you've ever supplied your e-mail address to a
newsgroup, a mailing list or a directory, you may well become a target for
spammers. If you've placed your e-mail address on your web site, you will
almost certainly become a target.
This is because spammers use automated systems to trawl
round the Internet, looking at millions of pages and scooping up all the
e-mail addresses they find. They then add these e-mail addresses to their
mailing lists. They don't care if some of the e-mail addresses are invalid
- their spam will get through to plenty of people. The mailing lists get
re-sold and re-sold - and you get more and more spam. If you try to
"unsubscribe" your request will usually be at best ignored. At worst, you
have told the spammers that your address is valid, and you'll get even
more spam.
How to Reduce Spam
Avoid having lots of e-mail addresses on your web site.
You'll quite likely get spam to all of the e-mail addresses! Have just one
e-mail address. The various e-mail hyperlinks can be set up to supply
different 'Subject:' lines for different purposes.
Even better is to use Forms instead of e-mail addresses.
Or you can use a number of techniques to hide your e-mail address from
automated systems while still making it available for use by real people.
We now use these techniques on websites which we develop.
However, if the spammers have already got your e-mail
address it's too late! Taking your e-mail address off your web site won't
get it out of the spammers databases.
How to Kill Spam
If you don't want to change your e-mail address then you can block spam
when it arrives at your PC. Read about Spam Shield
now and find out how you can open Outlook and Outlook Express spam free.
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