by Azam Corry
How can you stop the unsolicited, bulk commercial email we call spam?
Well, lets be honest - you can't. Not entirely. But it's easy to avoid as much as 90% the of spam you get. Let me explain...
Fixing The Leaks Is Better Than Bailing Out
Although there are many spam filtering applications available, they take time to set up, have to be constantly adjusted, and more often than not cause as many problems as they solve.
The simple fact is that to filter out ALL spam, you're also going to inadvertently filter out some of the legitimate email you WANT to read.
It's unavoidable. No spam filter will ever be infallible.
Relying on a spam filter is a bit like bailing water out of a leaky boat instead of plugging the holes.
Until you fix the leaks, you're fighting a constant battle to stay afloat. And if you don't bail fast enough, you'll sink!
In the context of spam, fixing the leaks means preventing your addresses from getting into the spammer's grubby little hands in the first place.
Spam Bots Are Your Number One Enemy!
Spam Bots trawl the net much like search engine spiders. The big difference is that they only record the email addresses found on a Web page.
They create huge lists of addresses which are used to send spam.
But it doesn't end there ...
These lists are often sold to many other spammers, as well as the naive and misled who believe they're buying opt-in lists.
Spam Bots are the #1 reason why webmasters are drowning in spam!
It's Easy To Fight Back When You Know How!
All you need to do is encode all your email addresses into HTML so that spam bots can't read them.
If they can't read your address, they can't add it to their list.
As it's HTML, encoded addresses will display and behave exactly the same on a Web page as those written in regular Roman text.
Here's a quick way you can do it:
Every word has vowels, so instead of encoding all the letters, we can simplify things by only translating the vowels, the "@" and the "com" in your email address, plus the "mailto:" portion of the link.
Your address will still be totally unreadable to a spam bot.
Special Code To Instantly Hide Your Email Addresses
I've encoded all the essential elements for you so you can refer to them whenever needed.
The format of the code is:
[Ampersand][Hash][ASCII Number][Semicolon]
a = & # 97 ;
Unfortunately, since some email clients automatically translate the code, I've had to put a PERIOD (.) in the middle of each code character BEFORE the ASCII number, to prevent translation.
Delete the periods before using the any of the code below:
mailto: = &#.109;&#.97;&#.105;&#.108;&#.116;&#.111;:
@ = &#.64;
com = &#.99;&#.111;&#.109;
a = &#.97;
e = &#.101;
i = &#.105;
o = &#.111;
u = &#.117;
For example, "@nowsell.com" (my domain) would become:
@nowsell.com
Let's break that down so you can see it more easily:
[@][n][o][w][s][e][l][l][.][c][o][m]
@ n o w s e l l . c o m
Note: Some people simply replace the "@" in their address with the code version. I don't think that's sufficient. Spammers only have to teach the software to recognize that one coded letter and your sunk. Also, some spam bots search for the "mailto" link because whatever follows must be an email address, so I recommend you encode that too.
<--- Power Tip --- >
If you use several different addresses in the form of "something@yourdomain.com," leave the "something" portion of the email address unencoded. You can then use the "search and replace" function of a text or HTML editor to update all the addresses on your site at once. Search for "@yourdomain.com" and then "mailto:" replacing each with the encoded versions.
<--- Power Tip --- >
There's now one-click software to encode email addresses for you. You can either get the email encoder alone at the link above, or grab my special big value bundle that includes 17 additional products, but is the same price as the encoder alone: Special Encoder Bundle |
Get Smart And Protect Your Web Site
Kill spam at the root. Protect your Web site from the scourge of the spam bots and you'll dramatically reduce the amount of spam you get. If you find the code difficult, use software like mine to do it all for you. But whatever you do, you MUST encode all of your email addresses ... Now!
© 2002 Azam Corry "Do it Better. Do it Faster. Do it Right!"
Online since 1998, Azam Corry Helps Newbies Develop a Winning
Web Marketing Strategy with Great Free Guides, Tools and Resources.
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