If you’re not careful about how you use your primary e-mail address, you’re likely to find yourself covered up in spam. Once spammers lay their hands on your primary e-mail address, they will send you spam forever. There seems to be no “time out” period, either. You can verify to a spammer that your e-mail address is “live” by purchasing something from a non-secure site, clicking a link to a Web site, or choosing the “unsubscribe” button at the bottom of an e-mail message.
The following sections tell you what not to do with
your e-mail address and why. None of this is any guarantee that you won’t get spam, or that spammers won’t find you. But by following this advice, you can drastically reduce your spam problem and reduce the amount of spam you’ll get in the future.
No matter how hard you try to keep spam out of your inbox, and no matter what strides you take to protect yourself from spammers, you can’t control what your friends and family do. In fact, it may well be your friends that become your downfall. I had a spam-free inbox once. That was before my friend JD used my address to get free movie tickets (if you offer up 15 or more e-mail addresses, you’ll be sent a ticket good for a free pass), Leo gave my address to a Web site so that I could see some cute list about how to be happy (yeah, that made me REAL happy), and years ago John sent me a greeting card from a popular greeting card Web site.
Unfortunately, these well-meaning friends and their cute cards, schemes to get prizes, and funny jokes will only help spammers meet their goals. Once you’re on one of these lists, you’re on all of them. So when you get a new and pristine e-mail address, you’re going to have to be tough with your friends and family. Make sure to tell your friends in no uncertain terms that this is your private address. They are not to share it with anyone.
Ever find it funny that a spam message rarely gives any information about who the spammer is, from what company they come, or the physical location of the company, but that they almost always offer some legitimate-looking option to unsubscribe? Most of the time, it’s a ruse. The thing is, hitting the unsubscribe button only tells the spammers that they’ve reached a working address. Once they know that, you’re doomed. Now, there are legitimate unsubscribe options - Amazon, Microsoft, or Northwest Airlines, for instance. But with unsolicited e-mails, unsubscribe options will never get you off the mailing list.
Getting new addresses to spam is one of a spammer’s highest priorities, and they go to great lengths to get them. In the late 1990’s, spammers took a hint from Web search engines and created Web crawlers and Web spiders that simply look at page after page and look for the @ symbol. When they’d find one, they would harvest the address. If you’ve got your email address on a Web page, you’re sure to get spammed.
The lesson is clear: Do not post your e-mail address in “naked” form on your Web page. The spiders are still looking around, all day, every day, although they're much more sophisticated than they used to be. Furthermore, make it clear to friends, family, and colleagues that they cannot post your e-mail address on their Web pages. This is a big problem for people who are publicly known for some reason, like a senator or congressman, or whose address is often used for a contact, such as one who serves on a committee.
If it’s absolutely essential that your e-mail address be posted on a web site, have it rendered in graphic form or in such a way to avoid a spider (you can email me at joli_ballew at hotmail dot com, for instance).
You’ve probably seen this already--where someone’s address is not character-based but designed into a graphic in a file. Spiders can’t read the contents of graphics, so this is one way around the spiders.
Just as there are spiders (web robots or whatever you want to call them) that look at Web pages to harvest addresses, there are spiders that look on newsgroups, in chat rooms, and Web discussion boards too. Postings to newsgroups and boards often require the entry of an e-mail address of some kind. Some people simply post a phony address; that works. Others disguise their usual e-mail address so that those “in the know” can still contact them, while spiders get lost in the Web.
The idea behind obfuscating is that the address is broken up in a way that a spider can’t identify it as a phony address but a reasonably intelligent person can. For example, if your email address is BobsAGreatGuy@mac.com you might try any of the following addresses:
· BobsAGreatGuy@MacPULLTHIS.com
· BobsAGreatGuy@MacNOSPAM.com
· BobsAGreatGuy@MacSPAMSUCKS.com
Unfortunately, the spammers figured this out pretty quickly (seeing how all they have to do is note that an address has several blocks of upper case type), so you’ll have to be a little more ingenious if you really want to protect yourself:
· BobsAGreatGuy@MacPuLLThIS.com
· BobsAGreatGuy@MacNO$PAM.com
· BobsAGreatGuy@MacSPaMSuCKS.com
Although it might take a minute to figure out what to remove, those users who participate in newsgroups regularly will be old pros and will know what you’ve done.
Tip: It won’t be long before you’ll have to remove the word “spam” from your obfuscated address name. Spammers have figured that out, too.
The largest and best-known e-commerce retailers like Amazon.com can probably be trusted not to sell your e-mail addresses to spammers. (They have too much to lose if it ever came out, for way too small a financial gain.) Unfortunately, midsize and smaller retailers are another matter. When creating an account with online retailers, then, no matter how big or small, always use a disposable e-mail address. These are e-mail addresses obtained from one of many free e-mail services that are everywhere on the Web. They cost nothing, and when an address inevitably becomes a spam magnet, it can be discarded and another one obtained easily.