Tuesday, December 26, 2006

Combat Spam Mail!

We all know that spam mail is a big problem and an annoying one. One way to combat is is to look at how you have your email addresses posted on your web site(s). If you have them as normal mailto: links, you are opening your users up to spam, spam, and more spam.

Once you are on those spam mailing lists, it is very difficult to be removed from them!

One way to help combat the problem is to change the way your email addresses are listed on your sites. Ours are obfuscated or done in javascripts. If you check out our staff page and view the source, you will see that I have obfuscated not only the email address in the mailto: link, but also the text part of that link. It's been that way for a few years now.

This article will give you some great information on how to hide your email addresses on your sites.

Your email administrator is working very hard to combat the spam problem, but he also needs the help of the users and web admins.

Never click "Unsubscribe Here" in a spam email. Now they KNOW you exist! Also, don't register for anything using your email address. Get a Google or Yahoo email address that is disposable. I have 3 that I use just for this purpose. If I start getting too much spam at one, I just close it up and open a new one.

Just a few hints ... but make sure you change the way your email addresses are posted on your web site. You can always contact me for help with this too.

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