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Protect Your Website E-mail Address

Written by: Bill Golden

Article Overview: Have you ever wondered why you get so much e-mail SPAM? One reason may be that your e-mail address is being harvested directly from your website. This is a problem that can be easily resolved and you might be surprised at the number of people that don't know how to deal with this nuisance. In this article, we will learn more about how your e-mail gets into the hands of spammers and how to slow them down.

Protect Your Website E-mail Address

Let me start by saying that I absolutely despise e-mail SPAM. Are you with me? If so, read on.

E-mail spamming is big, big business. People have written computer programs that send out little SPAM bots that do nothing but scour websites (such as yours) in search of e-mail addresses. These e-mail address can either be in the visible portion or the coded portion of a web page. Once collected, or harvested, these e-mail addresses (including yours) are sold to all kinds of less-than-desirable organizations so they can send you even more e-mail SPAM.

There are other tricks spammers use as well, but let’s start with remedies we can easily implement. Here are some of the options:

1. Use a Contact Form service. HTML type contact forms, unfortunately, need your e-mail address in the coded part of your web page. However, you can use 3rd party e-mail processing services that shield your e-mail address from SPAM bots. One such service, formmail.com, is affordable and it works pretty well. It does, however, require a small bit of technical ability to get it up and running.

2. Don’t make your e-mail click-able. You may have seen that, on some websites, you can click an e-mail address and if you are using Outlook, Outlook Express, or Eudora, a “new message” window will pop up that is already addressed to the link you clicked. It does not matter if the link said “E-mail Me” or if it was the e-mail address itself. Either way, SPAM bots can snag it. There are methods to deal with this (see #5, below).

3. Put your e-mail address in an image file. You can create a small image file that consists of your e-mail address. If you don’t make it clickable, your website visitor can re-type your e-mail address into their e-mail program. It’s not as slick, but it works.

4. Break your e-mail address apart. This involves changing how your e-mail address is displayed to make it more difficult for SPAM bots to figure out what it is. Here is an example: example [at] gmail [dot] com. Most people can understand what this means, but they will not be able to just copy and paste the e-mail address into an e-mail program.

5. Add an encryption Java script. You can find these scripts pretty easily on the Web by searching with a keyphrase, “email encrypt javascript,” or similar. Basically, these scripts break your e-mail address into parts that are reassembled only when someone clicks on the linked text. However, make sure that your linked text is not your e-mail address.

6. Use an e-mail encryption program. These programs rewrite the text linking to your e-mail address into numeric code that browsers can interpret, but SPAM bots can not (well, not easily) figure out. One excellent tool is at mailtoprotector.com – and, the price is right. Make sure that your linked text is not your e-mail address, however.

7. Don’t use obvious e-mail address names. Spammers, by default, send mail to e-mail address like info@, support@, webmaster@, help@, billing@, hr@ - well, you get the idea. Since your domain name is in the public domain, it is easy to build a SPAM list that contains these words with your domain name. As an alternative, consider moreinfo@ or helpme@ or gethelp@, etc.

8. Use disposable e-mail addresses. There are a variety of services on the Web that let you create disposable e-mail addresses. If you are willing to pay around $19.95 to Yahoo, you can get this service. Every time I go to a website that wants my e-mail address, I quickly create a new, disposable one, such as golsvcs-microcenter@yahoo.com for a computer vendor, Micro Center. Two good things come of this. First, I know who is sending the junk mail and second, I can “kill” the e-mail account any time I wish and I have protected my personal or business e-mail account.

While none of these methods will prevent all SPAM from reaching you, they go a long way toward thwarting all the SPAM bots that visit your website on a regular basis. Keep fighting SPAM!

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Article Tags: email, email, email address, junk, mail, nuisance, spam, spammers



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