PROTECT YOURSELF!
1. Never post your main email address (unencrypted)
on any web site / forum / sales site. If you need
to post an
email address somewhere, use an
email
alias
so that
if spam comes from that address you can simply delete the alias. Crestone Creations can set up alias' for you. There is no monthly charge, only the time to set it up.
2. Always encrypt your email address on your web
site. If you are with Crestone Creations, we have
been encrypting all posted
email
addresses
for the past
several years, but if your site was created before that time
please contact us to review
your site for spam protection. Recently we have acquired a
new, stronger encryption program, so it may need
to be updated on
your site.
3. In lieu of encryption, you can post your email address as an image. That way there is no code which is readable by a spam harvester. Of course, it is not a hyperlink (not clickable) anymore, so someone would have to type in your email address to send you an email, but it is MUCH more secure.
IF YOU ALREADY HAVE SPAM:
If you already get spam, here are a few things
to do:
• Enable a SPAM filter on the server and set it to a heavy setting. If
you host with Crestone Creations, this is available to you.
• regularly add nasty domains who send spam to your Spam Assassin black
list.
• email rules: setup rules in your mail program
which automatically delete emails with certain key
words - like, y'know, those pharmaceuticals ...
read more about rules - click here
• Bounce emails that are clearly junk, so that it appears, to that spammer,
that my address is not valid. Bounce is a feature available
within email programs.
• Spam Protect Service - MX Logic - If you still have spam, Crestone Creations has contracted with a 3rd party security company spends their days separating the good from the bad. They will preemptively filter spam before it even gets to our server. This is their business and we must charge for it - because they charge us for it! But it works. We will be publishing more info about this soon, but in the meantime we can set it up for you. It is $4.95 per month per POP account. We must cover ALL POP accounts on a domain - you can not just cover one account. If you would like this set up, click here . By the way, it works really well. One client had about 150 spam per day and it went to zero with all her desired email still getting through!
The last-resort solution to an over-abundance of SPAM is to change your address. Here's how to do it:
First of all, begin with a clean slate by changing
your email address. No sense fighting a losing
battle. Pick a new address which is not something "guessable" like don't pick info@ or something commonly used - a spammer may pick a domain name and then send a bunch of emails to plausible addresses within the domain (and as soon as you open/reply to one of them - they know it's a legitimate address and guess what - more spam to follow).
These are the steps I took using my email address change as an example:
1. changed my email address from clyde@crestonecreations.com
to a new email address (like I'm going to just type it in plain text here on this page - haha NOT).
2. set an auto responder to reply to all messages
at my old address. I don't have to worry about people
trying my old address and not reaching
me
because
of this auto-responder. I get no mail at the old address, all it does
is send a reply to people who try to reach me there. (As several years have passed now, I have disabled the auto-responder - but it was a good idea for the first year or so).
3. I let my regular contacts know my new address
and let the others acquire my address through the
autoresponder.
Quote from a client:
This morning at work I had 27 emails (extraordinarily
high) and they were from weird email addresses
like .fbi and .cia.gov and relating to my password
and
saying that my email had been detected as accessing 30 illegal websites.
What the heck is all this??
Answer: First of all, the
best way to analyze SPAM, which this
most likely is, is to view the header information. It takes some experience
to read this, so if the header information is sent to me via email, that
is the best.
Often times the header info reveals the true sending source instead of
what is seen in the short headers, which is the appearance of the sending
source.
In Mac's OSX Mail, you can reveal the long header info by
1. Opening the email
2. Keystroke: Shift+Command(Apple key)+H
(this will also hide the long header info, so you can toggle it long/ short)
Because there is no guarantee as
to how your email address is treated by those to
whom you give it out, there is a bit of control given
up whenever
you use
your email address to "sign up" for something or as contact info
for something that might become public. Again, the way I deal with that is
to use email alias. For example. If I were to set up an account at "whateverwebsite.com" then
I might make an email alias which is whatever@mydomain.com. That email
alias would re-route to myusualaddress@mydomain.com (substitue your email
there).
If SPAM started to come in addressed to the alias address, I would be clear
as to where it came from, how my email address was farmed, and I could
change the alias or delete it, as appropriate.
If your site is hosted with Crestone Creations, you can set up your own email
alias to attach to your POP account using your Plesk control panel or we
can do this for you for a small fee.
_________________
I could repeat all of the common wisdom on the realities
of SPAM and the struggle for solutions, but they
are so well addressed from every angle at: www.mindworkshop.com/alchemy/nospam.html
I suggest skimming the above referenced site for
info that may be relevant to you.
_________________
How do they get my address from a web site?
Read about the spam harvester - click here |
