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. Please contact us
to find out how you can open Outlook and Outlook Express spam free.
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