Guarding your Email Address

GUARDING YOUR EMAIL ADDRESS

To reduce spam, try and resist putting your email address directly onto any website that doesn't have the padlock symbol and always make sure that the email address on your own website is encrypted (with JAVA perhaps) in some way or displayed as a graphic (picture), which makes it very difficult for spammers to collect, or "harvest," your email address unless they visit your website personally, which they don't usually.

Do a search (or create a Google Alert) for your own email address every now and again and if you find it, politely ask the webmaster or website administrator to remove your email address or encrypt it.

All websites produced by AI&I are created with spam resistant email hyperlinks which makes harvesting your email address or addresses more difficult for spammers.

A drastic Anti-Spam measure!

You may wish to change an email alias every year that you use for your sales or service enquiries and which you regularly advertise everywhere on the internet, classifieds ads or weekly/monthly trade publications. If you have a website, it's not a good idea to publish your email address at all. Publish only the URL of your website (http://www.etc) in trade magazines, classifieds and internet ads.

For example, on or just before the 1st January 2008, your email address of "sales@yourbusinessemailaddress.co.etc" could be changed to become "sales2008@yourbusinessemailaddress.co.etc".

Deleting the old "sales@yourbusinessemailaddress.co.etc" email alias from your aliases list (by accessing your website hosting control panel or asking your webmaster) would effectively eliminate all spam (and all other email) formerly arriving via that email address.

Any messages then sent to "sales@yourbusinessemailaddress.co.etc" would simply bounce back to the sender as being undeliverable (address not known).

Previous customers would know the default (main) email address of your business because your email client could be configured to show the default email (or preferably, a substantive email-alias such as "info"@ or "enquiries"@) address of your business on any reply email sent to them, by you previously. Or, they could check your website for your new email address.

This simple technique certainly works to reduce spam overall, but think carefully before you implement this course of action. It would suit some business websites, but not others. And, you don't really want to change the email address held by your bank or credit card company nor the one used to receive business newsletters you have subscribed to, or friends, family, business associates or business trade directories unless you tell them all beforehand, which can be a chore. Think carefully about who may be quite legitimately using your email address before you delete it to stop the spammers using it to bombard you with spam!

All multi-page websites produced by AI&I have a suite of standardised spam-resistant email aliases available automatically which you can use for the various functions of running your business. So if the need arises to change or delete one or two, the rest remain unaffected. If you want a special or unique email address prefix added, simply ask.