Reduce Spam

Do you remember when you used to look forward to reading your e-mail?
The last time that was for me was in the late 1990's. Yes, we had Spam back then, but there wasn't as much as there is now.

Here are some tips that should help reduce the amount of Spam you see in your Inbox:

Tips to reduce Spam:

• If the e-mail is from a valid company that you trust, try the remove instructions in the e-mail (believe it or not: not every company wants to Spam you).
• Don't post your e-mail address openly on your personal or company Web site (ex. is BAD), Spammers have programs (sometimes called SpamBots or Spiders) that crawl the Web looking for e-mail addresses.
  • Obscure the e-mail address somehow (ex. ), you may need to let your users know how to decode it (i.e. tell them to take the 'SPAM' out, replace the ' at ' with '@', and the ' d o t c o m ' with '.com').
  • Post an image of your text e-mail address (without any text in the ALT or TITLE parameters of the IMG tag to suggest it's an e-mail address), ex.  , SpamBots are not designed with the ability to read graphics.
  • Use an online form for people to send you e-mail through, they will be able to send you an e-mail from a Web page and never see your e-mail address (neither will the SpamBots).
  • Use a JavaScript that decodes and inserts an e-mail address (ex. AddressScrambler or Anti-Spam Address Enkoder), or ASCII codes for characters in the e-mail address, on the fly as the page is loaded (SpamBots don't run JavaScript, it would take them too long, and make them too complex to program).
• Don't put your e-mail address on a guest book, online forum, blog, etc., unless you use one of the above techniques to obscure it from SpamBots (SpamBots crawl those pages too).
• If you send a news letter or e-zine via e-mail, don't send it from an account that accepts e-mail (including replies). Give the users instructions to contact you through your Web site or using any of the above methods to obscure your e-mail address (you don't know who may have signed up for it, or who it may end up being forwarded to, it may end up in a Spammers hands).
• Use a disposable e-mail address that you use if you think what you're signing up for will generate Spam (ex. yahoo.com, hotmail.com, spamgourmet.com, etc.). Some of the free email providers now also provide very robust Spam detection.
• Don't open it! Most Spam have hidden tracking codes that notify the the sender that you are an active e-mail account the moment you open the spam. You can usually tell from the Subject line or even the Sender name if the e-mail is a Spam or not, at that point you should delete it from your e-mail without viewing (or previewing) it. Another layer of protection in this case would be to set your e-mail program to only view e-mail in plain text format (don't view it in HTML). Most reputable companies include plain text versions of the e-mail along with an HTML version and most e-mail programs know how to just show the text version.
• Bounce the Spam back to the sender. This can decrease the number of Spams you receive. This may not be an option for some, especially if you have multiple e-mail addresses coming into one mailbox, you may unwittingly give the sender your base e-mail address.
• Use filters on or with your e-mail client that learn what you think is Spam and what you think is legitimate e-mail (ex. SpamBayes, Mozilla Mail, etc.).
• Use filters that you configure in your e-mail client to filter out certain things you know are Spam.
• Select a personal e-mail address that uses special characters (ex. '_') and numbers. There are some SpamBots that just send e-mails out to particular domains sequentially incrementing the characters in the e-mail address until it hits one that doesn't get bounced back, then it puts that name on a list for further Spams. They usually don't use special characters or numbers because it would take too long to cycle through all of the possibilities.
• If worse comes to worse, change your e-mail address on a regular basis, (ex. in 2004 you would have john04@someplace.com, in 2005 delete it and make john05@someplace.com, etc.), this may not be an option in a lot of cases.

A multi layered approach to Spam reduction tends to work best, so pick and choose the tips that are right for you.

If you apply these tips, you should notice a reduction of Spam in your Inbox.

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Here are some other links to information and/or software to help fight Spam:

• Ban the Spam - Anti-spam group.
• cauce.org - Anti-spam group.
• Consumer.net - Miscellaneous consumer information.
• DMA E-mail Preference Service Registration Form - This is actually from the Direct Marketing Association (DMA), they supposedly remove you from their mailing list (which includes all of their members too).
• MailWasher - Manage your e-mail before you download it! It also gives the option to bounce spam back to the sender! This looks like a nice tool for fighting spam.
• Small Claim - Learn how you may be able to sue the spammers.
• SpamCon Foundation - Information to reduce spam.
• SpamCop - May help you to trace the spam and reduce it.
• spamgourmet - Self-destructing disposable email addresses, titanium strength spam blocking, very short learning curve. Not just disposable email addresses, but they self destruct after they get used a number of times you set. At first I didn't think to much of the concept, but the more I use it the more I like it.
• Sender Permitted From - Reduces email address forgery and makes it easier to identify spams, worms, and viruses when domain owners designate sending mail exchangers in DNS, so that SMTP servers can distinguish legitimate mail from spam by verifying the envelope sender domain against client IP before any message data is transmitted.
• Spam Laws - Check the laws against spammers. Even check by state.
• spamNEWS - Spam news.
• TRAC - Telecommunications Research and Action Center.

• - A Federal Trade Commission e-mail address where internet users can forward offensive junk e-mail.