Tired of spam and the avalanche of unwanted emails? Eliminating all unwanted spam can be nearly impossible, but there are a few things you can do. The first step is to understand how others get your email address in the first place. Hate to say it, but the problem often begins with you. Many legitimate sites that you’ve given your email address to make their email lists available to other companies. From there, your address could go anywhere. More often, though, the fault lies with an email worm that crawls through websites, message boards and other sources picking up email addresses along the way from unsuspecting users (that would be you). There are several steps you can take to cut down on spam.
First, become an active user of the email filtering features offered by your email provider. Take the time to understand the features included, and actively use these features to reduce unwanted spam.
For additional protection, set up a second email account. We recommend maintaining one private email account that you give to only trusted family, friends and business associates. Then, establish a second address with a free service (such as Hotmail or Yahoo) that you use whenever asked to give your email address online. Remember, when you do submit your email address online, take care to uncheck the box that asks if you want to receive email.
Another nifty trick is to use disposable email addresses, also knows as DEA’s. DEA’s are best for situations when you don’t intend to have ongoing correspondence with the receiver. There are generally three types of DEA services: No registration required, registration required, and pay for use. Conduct a search of “disposable email addresses” to find one that works best for your needs. Depending upon the service, the account expires within a set amount of time, or you have the option of cancelling the address at any time. Also, as Wikipedia explains, when you create a disposable address, you’ll link it to a real email address, so that the emails are forward to you. Most services will also indicate in the subject line that the emails are forwarded so that you can easily identify the offending emails in your Inbox. And herein lies the beauty of this trick. If you’re weary of a website, sign-up using a disposable address, then sit back and watch for spam. If you receive nothing, you can return to the original site and enter your true email address, or simply let the temporary address expire if it’s been misused.
And finally, if you maintain your own website, be sure to disguise your email address. You can use special HTML characters instead of a traditional email address. Spiders that look for the “@” sign will not recognize the string of characters as an email address. In the code, replace the “@” with “@”. Most browsers will convert the HTML code back into the “@” sign so your visitors won’t be confused. Unfortunately, many spiders are smarter than this. So, you may instead want to consider hiding your email addresses with JavaScript. If you don’t maintain your site yourself and don’t know how to implement these measures, ask your webmaster for help. Or, email us for help.
Leave a comment