Where Did All These Emails Come From?
We’re all familiar with unsolicited emails (spam) … most of us get some every day. Some people get a few whilst others get hundreds or even thousands. Have you ever wondered why you seem to be a ‘spam magnet’? Let’s look at some of the steps you can take to reduce unwanted emails.
1. Never put your email address anywhere on your website. Use a contact form or a helpdesk script. If you are using a contact form, make sure it has a ‘security code’ that the site visitor has to fill in before submitting the form. Be extra careful with MS Frontpage forms. If you set the form to email the results, your email address may appear in the source code of your web page. If you are unsure about adding a security code to your form (this needs to be done with a programming language like PHP or ASP) hire a programmer to do it for you.
2. Be very careful when un-subscribing from mailing lists. You may sometimes receive messages from lists that you know that you didn’t ever subscribe to. In some cases, the ‘unsubscribe’ link on these emails is actually used for collecting and verifying active email addresses. If you didn’t subscribe to the list then the best thing to do is to ‘black list’ the email address if your email program allows you to do that. Otherwise, simply delete the message.
3. Never give your email address out in online forums or community sites. Instead, use private messaging (PM). Any time that you put your email on a publicly accessible web page it is vulnerable to automated programs that ‘crawl’ the web looking for email addresses.
4. Look for the privacy policy. Most reputable online businesses provide a detailed privacy policy which will tell you whether the business is going to sell or give your email address to other businesses. In some countries there are now laws which compel online businesses to provide a method for you to opt out of their mailing list.
5. Use common sense. Just as you wouldn’t give out your home telephone number and address to every business establishment that you happen to visit, you really shouldn’t provide your email address unless the business has a valid reason for requesting it. This could be for email customer support, notifications about new products and updates or simply to verify that the information you have provided to the business is correct. Be wary of businesses that offer free reports and products. Whilst most will allow you to un-subscribe from their mailing list there are some that will simply bombard you with emails about products and services that you probably aren’t interested in.
6. This is probably the most useful tip I can give. Get yourself a free email account. There are many to choose from such as Google GMail and Yahoo Mail. Use your free email address if you need to provide it online and keep your ‘main’ email address (i.e. the address that you have with your internet service provider) for family, friends and other important contacts.
The beauty of a free email address is that if it ever gets that full of unwanted emails that it becomes a major task to sort the good from the bad, you can simply close that address and open a new one without causing any disruption to the people whose emails are really important to you.
Gary Smith has been managing internet servers since the mid 90’s. He also provides security and general maintenance services to dedicated server owners at The Dedicated Server Doctor
