Spam Prevention

Spam Prevention Techniques

Spam is an ongoing issue that costs businesses and individuals billions of dollars worth of lost time and resources. Spam includes unsolicited commercial email and other unwanted bulk emails.

There are a number of techniques that individuals use to restrict the availability of their email addresses, with the goal of reducing their chance of receiving spam.

Some useful tips on spam prevention as follows. These are based on best practice recommendations:

1. Avoid opening spam emails and clicking on links in spam messages.
2. Do not buy anything from a spammer. Not only, you risk comprising your security and infecting your computer with malware – viruses and so on – you also reward and encourage the spammers.
3. Do not be tempted to reply. The mailbox is probably unread.
4. Do not threaten the spammer. Some mails will be seen and spammers have rights too. Threatening messages could expose you to legal action.
5. Avoid ‘unsubscribe’ options. Cynically, spammers often include an ‘unsubscribe’ link. Far from removing the menace, clicking it will confirm that your address is active and probably attract even more spam.
6. Use a disposable email address. You could use this account especially for buying online or writing to newsgroups. If you find that you are getting a lot of spam at this address, you can simply delete it and set up another.
7. The more people who have your email address, the more spam you’re going to get. So, keep your address close to your chest.
8. Don’t publish it on the web unless it is an absolute must. And if you have to, use a different address for that purpose.
9. Be wary about giving out your main email address. If in doubt, it is a good idea to use a disposable address.
10. Never reveal your email address on your website. If you have a website, putting your email address on it will be easy fodder for a ‘spambot’ that is harvesting addresses. You could use a web contact form instead.
11. Munging. A simple but effective technique where you present your address in a way that people can easily work out but which will fool spambots. They will look for a pattern, such as [email protected]. Writing the address as ‘test at domain dot com’ would probably evade them.
12. Use the in-built spam/junk filters available in your email client to blacklist the email addresses that are sending you annoying email messages.
13. Create rules that block spam—or set up several other handy tasks—based on specific criteria that you set.
14. Use a third-party spam prevention software as an add-in to your email client.