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Spammers
-- unethical senders of junk email -- are going to steal email
addresses from your website. No doubt about that. If your site
provides access to staff or group members, it's your responsibility
to protect their addresses from spammers, as best you can.
Here are
a few ways to do so; you have to decide which are appropriate
for your site.
1.
Spammers use
software that scour the Internet seeking websites with email addresses.
They even look inside the source code. Hide your addresses from
their "spiders" by putting them behind text and removing
the @ that they look for. In the HTML code, replace @ with @
and it will still work like an actual address. Test this to see
it in action: Email Us!
(This is not a valid, working address, so don't send mail.) Here's
the code for my example:
<a
href="mailto:spamtest@gnwda.org">Email Us</a>!
2.
Spammers' software
can only look for addresses that are written in text form. Turn
each address into a simple .gif image, and create a link from
it using Suggestion #1. Your clickable address on the page would
look like this:
3.
Spammers sometimes
look for email links and activate them to harvest addresses. But
if they can find neither text nor links, too bad for them! In
our sample, if the above graphic had no link, spammers would ignore
it. Legitimate visitors would have to manually type the address
into their email client, however. Spammers could do this, too,
but the theory is that they won't take the time, because they're
too much in a hurry, seeking as many addresses as possible as
quickly as possible.
4.
Spammers use
search engines to find webpages that have a lot of "contact
us" information. To keep search engines from finding and
listing the page that provides email addresses, place the following
code above the </head> tag:
<META
NAME="ROBOTS" CONTENT="NOINDEX">
5.
Spammers search
for the word "email" and other commonly used words that
indicate addresses are present. Instead of posting addresses on
your "Contact Us" page, give visitors a form to fill
out, which sends the information to whichever "recipient"
the submitter wants to contact. Of course, use the @
(of
Suggestion #1) in the source code.
6.
Spammers think
you're too stupid or lazy to report abuses of your addresses.
Prove them wrong by posting a message like this:
Want
to send email to our staff? Spammers not allowed!
If you are harvesting addresses for a mass mailing,
you will be reported and blacklisted as an abuser!
7.
Spammers who
are really bad keep changing their own addresses and servers,
so that when they get blacklisted on anti-spam databases, they
switch to new, still-unreported source. We have to fight back
by reporting them every time. Tell your people to notify you of
spam they receive at their website domain name address, and educate
them on how to report the spam. Blacklisting occurs immediately
after they're reported to the proper authorities.
Report
spammers to SpamCop.
8.
Spammers will
still sometimes get past all your protection, especially if your
people spread their addresses around by subscribing to mailing
lists and other online services. Find out if your Web hosting
company includes spam fighters for your domain name email service.
For example, some include "Spam Assassin", which identifies
incoming spam, removes MIME formatting and reverts it to plain
text (so you don't have to see porn images) and stamps it loud
and clear with a warning that it is spam; you can delete it without
having to read it first.
9.
Spammers sometimes
clean out their mailing lists of dead addresses (and sometimes
they don't). Send spammers a mailer-daemon bounce-back message
that says your addresses are not valid. This can be done with
a program called MailWasher
Pro. For a very low price, this software also lets you
preview all the mail in all your domain name mailboxes (and others
you have access to) at one time, so you can weed out spam and
viruses with one click of a button before you even start up your
email client. It's very user-friendly, very configurable for whatever
your preferences might be, and very handy.
Additional
ideas from GNWDA members:
Posted
by: Rich Bedard of e-Catholic
2000
I use a program
called "Email
Control" to pre-screen all my email right at my personal
Internet service provider (ISP) server before I decide whether
or not to download it via Outlook Express. It is a free download.
You can delete spam right at the server without having to view
it. You can place senders on a blacklist and their emails will
be automatically deleted the next time. You can also send back
Mailer Daemon messages to the source indicating your email addy
is invalid etc. Additionally, you can configure it to include
all your email addresses, both personal and webserver email alike.
(Editor's note: this is very similar to MailWasher Pro.)
The only downside
is that it displays a fairly small advertising banner at the top
right of the screen.
Do you
use any methods not listed here? Submit it at the top of this
page (right column) and we'll add it!
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