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How To Get Rid Of Spam

This is a Tutorial on How Get Rid of Spam Once and For All. This guide will help you avoid getting hundreds or thousands of junk emails (spam, UBE, unwanted commercial emails) that occur naturally when you open a web site. I’ll explain why it happens, how spammers find you and some tricks of the trade that I’ve learned over the years to foil their plans to barrage you with unwanted commercial advertisements for every real estate, prescription and scam known to mankind. There are some techniques that are easy to implement and others that require a bit of extra effort, often the return is worth the effort. As the author of a widely used spam blocking program called SpamVault, I know about spammers and their tricks.

The Easiest Way to Avoid Getting Spammed

One of the best tools to taking control of your destiny is your own domain name. Not only do you then get your own web site but you also get some special tools to use to avoid spam. Simply put the easiest way to avoid spam is to take a pro-active approach from day one to prevent spammers from getting your email address. Typically after setting up your domain name, even without a web site, you can start setting up email addresses. I recommend that you start with four email addresses. This may seem excessive at first but when you understand the logic in this you will never do it any other way.

1. Junk Email Address: This address is the one you put out in the public on you web site, the one you use to sign up for newsletters, the one you give to any organization that hasn’t proven that they are not going to be sending you unwanted emails or selling your address to others. This will be a very busy email box that people will use until they fall into one of two categories; 1) Business 2) personal. For this address I recommend using a name like, email001@yourdomain.com. This way, if it gets abused, you simply turn it off and change it to email002@yourdomain.com.
2. Business Email Address: This is the email address you put on your business cards. It should be something easy to remember but not exactly something personal. You would only provide this email address to “individuals” who you know through business. When you do get an individual’s email address, they then can have your Business Email Address as well. If you just struck up a relationship with an online advertising agency who is going to provide your company with a service but don’t know the individual who you’ll be working with, give them the Junk Email Address for now.
3. Personal Email Address: This one is by far the most private email address. It’s for friends and family. You’ll probably find that this is also the most important email address and therefore keep it private.
4. Wildcard Email Address: The COMPANY_NAME email system allows you to have one address called a ‘default’ address which catches any email sent to your domain that doesn’t have a formal box set up. The default address then forwards your email to the box of your choice. I recommend you forward any mis-addressed email to your Junk Email Address. Using the address wisely is a great way to figure out who is reselling your email address. When I shop on line, I never want to give the store or service my Business or Personal addresses. Even if the purchase is for business. Instead I give them an address named after their domain name. For example, if I’m buying something from widgets.com, I’ll tell them that my email address is widgets.com@mydomain.com. Then when they send me a confirmation or any further correspondences it will be directed to my junk mail box by the ‘default’ address. The key here is that if I start getting email sent to this custom created email address from somewhere other than widgets.com I’ll know who is selling my email address and then I can block that address forever more. Note that from day one, spammers who get a hold of your domain name may/will start sending you email to addresses that are not your own in hopes that you are using a wildcard email address. They don’t care if it’s your junk email box, or if you never read it, their job is to deliver spam. Any time email doesn’t get rejected, they get paid.

Obfuscating (encode) Your Email Address

The next challenge is to make it difficult for spammers to get your email address while making it easy for clients who need to get a hold of you. To understand how to do this you need to understand a little about how spammers get your email address in the first place. Spammers use “spambots” or programs that troll the internet searching for email addresses to build huge databases of email addresses. They then offer the service of mass mailing to unwary or unscrupulous merchants who wish to help you part with some of your hard earned cash.

Our goal here is to trick the spambots. How? By encoding (known to propeller heads as "obfuscating") the email addresses that we put on our web site in such a way that a spambot won’t recognize it. Here are some good techniques:

1. Obfuscation. Here’s a link to a little program that will encode your email address in such a way that 90% of the spambots will not recognize but 100% of browsers and humans will. This is my number one recommendation for avoiding spam. Still, it’s best to use your Junk email address discussed above even though you can be pretty well assured of avoiding spammers using this technique.
2. Whenever you post your email address in newsgroups or other public places where spambots can find/will find them, add some spaces in the address so that people can see the address but spambots will probably get it wrong or won’t recognize at all. Example: myemail @ mydomain.com. Note the spaces around the “@” symbol. Again, always use your junk address in public places.

But What If I'm Already Getting Spam?

Following the suggestions above will help you avoid 99% of spam if you’re domain name is new. And for those of us who receive hundreds of thousands of spams per month, it is worth the effort, but what about those who are already getting spammed to death. Don’t worry there’s hope.

Avoiding spam once your email address is out there is a bit more challenging. In some cases the email box you’ve known and loved is beyond hope. It might be better to simply block that address and start using a new one. Before this happens, why not try the following techniques.

Use SpamVault to block Spam

PureIdeasPlus.com offers a great program for blocking spam called SpamVault. I originally wrote SpamVault as a little project to help curb my own spam problem. I run a small association for hosting companies (my competition) and I soon discovered that I was not alone in getting a lot of junk mail. In fact, others were getting deluged with junk mail far worse than I was. Over the years I’ve developed SpamVault for my clients and then I began providing copies of SpamVault to other hosts to help them and their clients block spam. Now my little project has taken on a life of its own and is available to over a 1,000,000 users world wide and has blocked untold millions of unwanted junk mails and viruses.

SpamVault will block email based on several criteria within the email including where it came from, what is in the subject or body, what’s attached to the email, and even does pattern matching to foil many of the tricks played by spammers to bypass filtering software such as SpamVault. One of the strongest features in SpamVault is it’s white list capabilities where you can make a list of friends who can write to you, and everyone else is blocked.

On of the advantages of SpamVault over programs that work on your computer is that since SpamVault works at the server level, the email is vaporized before you download it. This will save you time and money because you don’t have to wait for junk emails to be downloaded, you in turn don’t have to read the junk emails, and your data transfer usage is reduced.

For clients hosted at PureIdeasPlus.com, you have the advantage of using the latest version of SpamVault to block junk mail.

Here's a resource that will teach you more about where the spam is coming from. By viewing the header of an email you can learn a lot about it's source.

Bayesian Email Filters

A newer technique for blocking spam is to use a program that ‘learns’ what is and what is not spam based on your own opinions. These programs use a special algorithm called Bayes' Theorem. Many people swear by these programs, however, the results I’ve seen are similar to filtering programs like SpamVault. More important than comparing the programs, I suggest using every tool at your disposal to create a spam blocking arsenal.

Do We Still Get Spam?

Sure, we're not immune. I run a web hosting company like PureIdeasPlus.com that is constantly putting its domain and email addresses on line for the world to see. In fact, I have several email addresses that are spam-magnets which I use to test SpamVault. However, I have many email addresses that never get any spam at all. Those that do get spam are those that have been around long before I started learning the techniques I’m sharing with you here.

Start Avoiding and Blocking Spam Today

If you start using these techniques today, I promise that you can avoid 95% to 99.9% of spam in the near future. I wish you well.

Added Value of PureIdeasPlus.com

In addition to these suggestions, PureIdeasPlus.com provides a three-pronged approach to blocking spam on all of our servers

1- We provide each account with SpamVault a program designed to filter email. This $60 value is free with every account.

2- We utilize serverwide spam blocking for the most obvious spams such as emails with "viagra" in the subject line.

3- We subscribe to several internet watchdog groups that provide access to their database of known spammers and exploited computers.

4- We are always looking for new ways to block spam. Our most recent addition is the use of special black lists of spammers.

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