Support Topics: Spam: Tools & Tips: 8
simple things you can do reduce spam
Below we have tips and tools you can
use to help reduce the amount of Spam you receive in your
inbox.. Although there is no foolproof way to
prevent you from getting Spam, there a few simple things
you can do to reduce
the amount of Spam you receive
in
your
inbox:
1. Change your email address to something
that is not "guessable": Spammers
use “dictionary” attacks to find new
valid email addresses to add to their lists - they
generate thousands of random email addresses from
lists of standard names and words and try them against
the mail server. If your email address is joe@yourdomain.com
you are far more likely to end up on a spammer's
mailling list than if your address is
joe.myers@yourdomain.com or joe9867@yourdomain.com.
With this and the other suggestions
below you will greatly reduce the amount of junk
you get bothered with.
2. Give spam a home: If you shop
online, or enter contests, or like to request “more
information” on the
web, you could unwittingly be giving your e-mail address
to spammers. The trick, then, is not to give them your
primary address. Set up an alternative e-mail account
with Yahoo, Hotmail, or any free service and use
that address when you’re asked to enter an
e-mail address on a web form. This account will get
hammered with spam, but who cares? (In fact, some
of the free e-mail services have pretty good spam
filtering.) Note that major online retailers such
as Amazon.com have strict privacy policies—available
on their websites—about reselling your personal
information. Such organizations usually can be trusted
with your primary e-mail address.
3. Don’t
advertise your e-mail address: Spammers
use sophisticated software to search the web for e-mail
addresses.
If your website contains your e-mail address, you
could wind up on a spammer’s mailing list. See
the
"Tools" section below for ways to publicize
your e-mail address without giving your e-mail address
to spammers.
4. "Unsubscribe" and "Remove" at
your peril: Oftentimes a spam message
contains a link that promises to unsubscribe
you or to take your
name off a company’s mailing list. Be careful
clicking such a link because spammers use such links
to determine whether your e-mail account is active.
By clicking the link you may invite an avalanche
of spam. This also applies
to simply replying to a spam message asking them to
remove you from their list - don't do it. In such situations
you need to consider the source: Land’s End will
stop sending you e-mail at your request; a spammer
touting the
latest “grow your inadequate
body part” scheme probably won’t.
5. Disable image display in your
email application: If your
email application automatically displays images contained
within
email messages you should
disable that feature. These images are sometimes retreived
off of remote servers and are tagged with a coded reference
to your email address. When the image is downloaded
the tag is recorded and the spammer will know that
you received
their message
- validating that your email address is active.
6. Be discreet: Don't
provide your e-mail address on bulletin boards, newsgroup
posting,s or websites
unless you know that the owners
of the site will not give out your information.
Always read
the
privacy statement of a site before providing your
e-mail address. Don't send electronic greeting cards
unless
the site's privacy statement guarantees that your
information (including the e-mail address of the person
you're
sending the card to) will not be given away to anyone.
7. Remove your "Catch-All" account :
A "catch all" account directs all email addresses that aren't already specified @yourdomain.com to a specific email address. This can be a good tool if you want to give out unique addresses at your domain on the fly, but it also means that you're going to get a lot more spam. Much spam is sent to hundreds of addresses @yourdomain.com in what's called a dictionary attack. And since you've turned on your wildcard, guess where those messages are going to go? Yup. Right into your inbox. If you have a "catch all" account turned on, login to the Email Control Panel as postmaster for your domain. Once in, go to "Email Accounts". On the resulting screen click the "Set Catch-alll Bounced" link near the bottom of the screen.
8. Get active:
Since you and your business rely heavily
on email you
should get active in solving the spam problem. It
is getting worse
every day and is threatening
to remove
any usefullness email or the Internet may have. There
is only so much we or any other service provider
can do reduce Spam
- there is no switch we can flip or button to press
that will eliminate it. Anything we do to enhance
our mail systems or to filter Spam is
simply a "stop-gap" measure. These may
reduce the amount of Spam in
your
mail box, but they will not keep Spam from overloading
networks or collapsing mail systems - the problem
is growing too fast. So
you should get active - we highly recommend going
to spam.abuse.net and
read up on what you can do.
|
