Friday, January 05, 2007

Fighting SPAM in Two Clicks - Quick Tips for Lessening the Frustration of Unwanted Emails

1) Remove your email address from your website. Email addresses listed on you website are typically picked-up by e-mail address-harvesting robots that spider your site and extract them. Use web-based forms instead. This will significantly reduce the amount of spam you receive.

If you prefer to list a mailto email address on your site, it can be disguised to prevent the spammers from picking it up. The source code below is a JavaScript that writes a mail link onto the page. The full email address will not appear on the html source code and should not be detected by spambots.(Remove any breaks that may appear in the script below).


Another alternate script:



2) Use a Spam Filtering Tool

Ella for Spam Control is a extremely useful plug-in for Outlook and Outlook Express that helps filter incoming spam from multiple email accounts and prioritizes legitimate email into user-defined categories such as "Read Later." Ella offers a free trial and is the preferred solution used here at Two Clicks.


A comprehensive list of other Windows Spam-fighting tools can be found via the link below:

http://email.about.com/od/windowsspamfightingtools/Windows_Spam_Fighting_Tools.htm


3) Don't Bounce Back SPAM

It is now widely acknowledged that bouncing Spam back to the originator is ineffective. This is because the vast majority of Spammers use phony return addresses, while the Spammers easily detect simulated bounce messages. Bouncing Spam can burden a Network infrastructure and actually increase the amount of Spam you receive.