Dealing with Spam - Part One: Tips Reduce Spam

Unsolicited commercial email (spam) is an unavoidable consequence of running an online business. If your email address is made available to customers, it's likely to be available to spammers. 

Here are some tips to reduce the spam you'll receive and there are a number of programs available to help deal with it when you find yourself spending too much time clicking your delete button.

How is your email address obtained?

To deal with spam, it's helpful to understand how your email address gets on the lists. Last year the Center for Democracy & Technology conducted a six month study to determine the sources of unsolicited email.

They found that the vast majority of the spam they received came from posting an email address on the public web or to a public USENET news group. Spam was rarely generated from domain name registration or posting to web based message boards. (I'm assuming that posting your email address within the forum message itself is considered the "public web" and should be avoided, but that registering with an email address would not generate spam.)

Tips to Reduce Spam

To reduce the amount of spam you receive, email addresses on websites can be listed in a form that is readable by humans, but cannot be harvested using the tools that are used to collect email addresses.

The only sure way to prevent the spambots from harvesting your email is to not display it on your site. The free Master Spambot Buster script lets your site visitors email you without publishing your email address on your site.
Email harvesting tools cannot read an address displayed as a graphic instead of text. Use a graphics editing program to turn your email address into a graphic that matches the font on your page. To be completely protected you'll want to code the link from the graphic.

Alternatively, you can display your email address so that readers can figure it out, but it won't make sense to the harvesting tools; for example, "linda at internetbasedmoms dot com." Keep in mind that using this method may discourage customers from contacting you. Because we accustomed to just clicking a link that opens an addressed message window, customers may not take the extra steps to cut and paste and correct the address.

For a clickable link, use character codes in your html for the entire email address. The harvesting tools can't read it, but your customers can still email you. For example, <a href= "mailto:&#108;&#105;&#110;&#100;&#097;&#064;&#105;&#110;&#116;
&#101;&#114;&#110;&#101;&#116;&#098;&#097;&#115;&#101;&#100;
&#109;&#111;&#109;&#115;&#046;&#099;&#111;&#109;">

Encode your email address for free at one of these sites:
http://www.wbwip.com/wbw/emailencoder.html
http://www.prowebsitemanagement.com/index.html

Some small business sites now provide a form for customer contact rather than supply an email address (a practice once used primarily by larger companies). This practice may appear to be a less personal approach and may put off some customers.

While the above methods will be effective against many spambots, the more sophisticated programs may be able to harvest your email address despite your efforts. Additionally, your email address may already be on a number of mailing lists that will continue to generate mailings. Next week, part two of Dealing with Spam will address what to do about the spam that reaches your inbox.

Resources and Further Tips to Reduce Spam:
Read the Center for Democracy & Technology's full report at: http://www.cdt.org/speech/spam/030319spamreport.shtml.

Read Dealing with Spam -  Coping with Incoming Spam & Spam Filter Reviews

Linda Stacy is General Manager and Newsletter Assistant Editor for InternetBasedMoms.com. She works from her home in Massachusetts where she lives with her husband and son.