Discover How To Stop Spam The Simple Way!

You can block spam with spam filter programs. This will stop most spam messages in Outlook. However one big problem is that most spam filters will occasionally blacklist and stop legitimate emails. You can be blocked from receiving critical business correspondent or messages from friends, simply because some word in the mails trigger a red flag in the spam filter and the message won’t get through.

Also product information and newsletters send out to several recipients often get blacklisted by spam filters simple because too many messages are sent out at the same time or someone report it as spam forgetting having signed up for it earlier.

You like to stop spam, but not to stop legitimate e-mails.

One alternative and free solution is not to use any spam filter at all!
Instead you should make sure your email address can’t be found by the spammers in the first place.

You don’t get on their list from something you sign on to on the Internet!
There are exceptions. You should never sign up to any shadowy service. You should never use any service that claim to register your web site to search engines or resubmit it. You don’t need it, it doesn’t work and it only results on more spam.

The way you end up on the spammers e-mail lists are :

1. Spam boot find your email on web sites.
2. Your email is harvested from email address lists from computers or networks that are not protected by firewalls.

There are 3 steps you can make to prevent spam boots from finding your email address or addresses.

1. Hide your contact email address on your web site from being found by spam boots.
2. Remove your email address from other sites.
3. Block spam boots penetrating your computer by using firewalls.

How do you hide your email from spam boots on your web site?

I use java script to hide my address from the spam boots.

Here is an example of java script code: In our example the email address is contact@mysite.com

<SCRIPT TYPE="text/javascript">
mymail='contact'
mymail=(mymail + '@' + mysite.com')
document.write('<A href=mailto:' + mymail + '>' + 'Contact' + '</a>')
</SCRIPT>


This work very well if all visitors have JavaScript enabled.
You can add an image which displays the email address for visitors that have JavaScript disabled!¨
In this case the graphic image is named myemail.gif

<SCRIPT TYPE="text/javascript">
mymail='contact'
mymail=(mymail + ' @' + 'mysite.com')
document.write('<A href=mailto:' + mymail + '>' + 'Contact' + '</a>')
</SCRIPT>
<NOSCRIPT>
<img border="0" scr="mymail.gif" width="300" height="30">
</NOSCRIPT>


The image width the email address in our case has a width of 300 pixels and a height of 30 pixels. The image is displayed only for visitors that have JavaScript disabled.

Your email address or addresses can have been published on a number of places, even on sites you don’t know.
So how do you find these sites and pages?

Simple!..You search for your email addresses on Google!

From the Google search you can find the web sites on in which your email is found.
You then have to mail the site owners of the sites and ask them to remove your email address or tell them to instead make a direct link to your web site.

Your email may have been published at locations you don’t know about. It can be a member site of an association you belong to, on any of your friends’ sites or sites that is connected to your work place.

There are other methods you can use to hide your address and prevent spam harvesting programs.
You can write your email with spaces as in contact @ mysite.com.
Or you can write @ as AT as contactATmysite.com
Or you can put in extra text which the sender has to remove like contact@REMOVEmysite.com

There are many variations on this theme. Another method to try to stop spam is to let the visitor fill in their message in a contact form on your web page. This method is very popular on commercial web sites.

If you do this the amount of spam you receive will decrease.
Not immediately. You will see that the amount will decrease after a couple of months. After 6 months the amount will almost be gone. The reason is that the spammer use list of email addresses which have been harvested from the Internet and they prefer that the list they use is fresh in an attempt to avoid to spam to addresses that are out of date.

Note: When you go through your mailbox and remove unwanted mails like spam you should not immediately open the mails, as this may trigger for the spammers that the message have arrived at a valid mailbox. You prevent your mail from being open in Outlook by closing down the preview pane.

You have also to protect your computer with a firewall, anti virus software and check your computer for spyware program to make sure that spam harvesting software doesn’t penetrate your computer.

Also computer belonging to friends who have you email address in their address book should be protected with firewalls in the same way.

Sometimes these measures are not enough and your email address still end up at the spammers.

Your email may have become listed on to many web pages.
If that is the case you have to resort to block spam by using some form of spam filter.

Most major free e-mail services use default spam filters which you don’t have any control over.
One option is to use a spam filter where the sender has to opt-in in order to be able to send any message. SPAMARREST is such a program. Opt-in means that the sender has to verify that it is a legitimate sender by responding to a sender reply. This is a good enough alternative if you use email only to communicate with business partner or to friends. It is not so good if you want to sign up to any newsletter as the sign in operation is made automatic through auto responder.

An alternative which solve this problem is to use to a spam filter software such as SPAMBULLY. With this spam filter you are able to go in and view mails which have been flagged as spam. This makes it possible to whitelist the email address of the sender, so that next time messages from this address will get through.

If you want to send out email you can check your email for red flags which may block your emails by using Spamcheck. This will minimize the risk that your mail will end up in the spam filters.

If you send out newsletters or product information to people who have signed up for your information then you want to make sure your information gets through. Problem is you can’t be sure of that!