Spam can be a real nuisance! Not only that, but it costs us time and can contain phishing scams, viruses and other malicious content.
Nobody likes dealing with spam, but there are things we can do to combat it and even better prevent it.
So let’s start with 4 spam prevention tips
- Don’t post email addresses on your website. If at all possible use contact forms to enable people to get in touch with you. If you think it’s absolutely necessary to post your email address on a web page, try to confuse the spam bots by writing something like “username (at) domain (dot) com” or encode the email address using a tool like this.
- Don’t post your email address on other websites. Same reasoning as #1
- Google your email address Find websites where it’s posted publicly and ask them to remove it.
- Be careful who you give your email address to. Don’t include your email address in a form unless you trust the site.
If you’re already getting a lot of SPAM, it’s still useful to take these steps to prevent yourself from getting even more. If its bad now, imagine getting twice as much spam next month.
4 spam blocking/filtering tips
If your getting lots of SPAM, there are a few ways you can go about blocking/filtering it.
- Unsubscribe. A lot of what we think of as spam, is actually newsletters and marketing messages from organizations we have subscribed to or purchased from. The CAN-SPAM Act requires organizations in the U.S. to include unsubscribe instructions in all emails, and requires they promptly respond to unsubscribe requests. Take 10 seconds to do that.
- Enable SpamAssassin. If you host your website with OurChurch.Com and get your email through that account, there’s a SpamAssassin tool in your cPanel control panel which can be used to block/filter spam for all @yourdomain.com email accounts. This is the least effect way to filter spam, but it can help some.
- Use spam-filtering software. If you are using email software on your computer, like Outlook, there is spam filtering software that can be installed on the computer.
- Use Gmail for your email tool. Gmail can import @yourdomain.com email in the same way that Outlook does. Email can be sent with a @yourdomain.com from address from Gmail. Gmail has a great spam filter that diverts more than 99% of spam into “spam” folder which you can still look through if you like.
I use Gmail for my work and personal email and I almost never get any spam in my inbox! That’s why I highly recommend it as the best way to combat spam (though prevention is still better than filtering).
One last note… your ISP (internet service provider) and WHP (web hosting provider) have very little to do with how much spam you get. They can provide you with tools like SpamAssassin, but the problem is there is no perfect way to identify spam. If the filter settings are “tight” to allow less spam through, some legitimate emails will get filtered out. So, it’s always better to have the spam filter either built into the email tool, as with Gmail or spam filtering software on your computer. It’s not only more effective, but you can also view messages that have been filtered into a spam folder.
Discuss
What’s your experience been with spam? Have any of these tips worked for you? Got any others that can help others?
2 Comments
Use greylisting. Bounce the first e-mail from any unknown client and wait for the server to resend it. After a specific amount of time, allow the message in. Use longer times for countries that spam a lot.
Maintain a white list of people you have e-mailed and skip greylisting for these domains.
It’s incredibly effective because most spam comes from infected computers which get shut down by their ISP before they can repeat or just don’t retry at all.
It doesn’t get rid of everything, but it helps a great deal.
If you then enable RBL blocking on the server, you reduce the spam per user to just a few messages per day. This can be problematic because sometimes the various people who manage the RBLs are a bit too aggressive. But it helps a great deal.
Some example stats from work – One user objected to grey listing. That user’s e-mail has averaged 5868 e-mail messages per month so far this year trapped by spam assassin rules. The other 179 users are averaging 39/month each. The only difference is grey listing.