Getting too much spam?

Here's some tips to reduce spam in your mailbox.

Don't put your email address on a webpage: I no longer put my email address on a web page. It is way too easy for email addresses to be harvested off of web pages. One solution is to have a 'contact' form on your site. Here's a link to some cgi scipts with a 'formmail' script. (There's a bunch of other cool cgi scripts there, too) But if you do this, do NOT call the script 'formmail.cgi', as many spammers can find these scripts and send out tons of spam.... and everyone will think YOU are doing it. Call the script 'contactme.cgi or anything like that. Or... On some sites I've put an image with my email address on it. It doesn't work as a link when you click on it, but I don't get spam at that email address either. Or... Some months ago I changed the email contact setup for all my Message Boards to the script below. This works fairly well and I've yet to get any spam to email addresses I use to post messages. There is a bit of a problem using this method for some AOL'ers using Explorer as Explorer doesn't want to give up control of email, so those users get a funky Micorsoft error page. They still should be able to see your email address at the bottom of their browser when their mouse goes over the link... but some people just do not figure this out. To make this work you just need to copy the exact text in the box below, and paste it into a new text file. In a text editor, not a word processor. Programs like MS Word or Pagemaker will add extra stuff to the file that you don't want. Note Pad should work for PC users and BBEdit Lite works for Mac users. Save this file as 'mail_to.cgi' and upload it into the 'cgi-bin' directory you see when you ftp into your site. Permissions need to be set so everyone can 'execute' it, everyone can 'read' it, and the owner can 'write' to it. (chmod 755) Your ftp program should let you do this. #!/usr/bin/perl ## Script to put 'mail_to.cgi' in place of regular mailto ## $email = $ENV{'QUERY_STRING'}; $email =~ s/&.*//; $email =~ s/\*/\@/; $email =~ s/,/\./; print "Location: mailto:$email\n\n"; exit; Then just make your email links look like this: <A HREF="/cgi-bin/mail_to.cgi?myemail*allsolutions,net">Email us here</A> Don't forget to replace my email address with yours... leaving the '*' intact. It might look a bit complicated, but it's a two minute job setting this up. If you have problems making this work once you've uploaded the script, let me know, and I'll fix it for you. (Some Windows broswers have problems with this script... what else is new) Email us here Don't let people put your email address on their web sites, either. Make some other arrangements... like sending them a 'contact' gif, or a link to a contact form. Do not use common 'usernames'. Do not use 'admin', 'webmaster', 'info', 'sales', 'marketing', 'contact', or 'hostmaster' as the user in your email address. It's best to have these disabled. These are so common that spammers will just put those users to your domain and be fairly certain that they'll get to a person. Some spammers even started using variations on some of these, such as 'master' @ If you have usernames that you would like disabled, email me with those email address, one to a line, like this: dummy@allsloutions,net noname@allsolutions.net etc.... and I'll disable those for you. If you would prefer to just have a few email addreses active, just email me those, one to a line... and I'll set up your account so you only get email to those email addresses. I usually set up your email so all email addresses work, but as spammers get more vicious, this does not seem to be as practical as it used to be. I used to use 'www@whateverdomain.com' just for registering sites for search engines... and I never got spam that way, which surprised me. Plan to have one address for your outgoing email address, one for message board posts, one on your web site, and a different one if you join a pay site, etc. Run your own mail server. If you have a full time internet connection with a unique IP address, it might not hurt to have your own mail server, so you can change stuff whenever you want. I actually used an Argosoft mail server on a PC I was running for a friend here, and it was very easy to use, and had it's own web-based mail setup, so you can get your own mail if you're out of town at any computer. And for Mac users there's still a very good free version of Eudora mail server available. And with your own mail server you can block common domains when they spam you. But you have to be careful you dont have your mail server set up to allow spammers to relay email thru your server, as you can actually get blacklisted by doing that. You are lucky enough to have a web host that is going to work with you. You would really need your own mail server to keep changing your email address, but if you plan ahead and enable 5-10 at first, then you should be covered for a while... and maybe only have to disable one every year or so. Stop using the email address you are using now! If you are already getting spam at an email address you are going to have to change it... plan ahead... start using a different email address now. Start responding and sending email from that address. DO NOT put it on a web page. Put a DIFFERENT email address on your site if you have to. Let some people know you've changed it. Then in 4-6 months or so disable the old address. and you WILL seriously thank me for the tip. Of course it helps if you have a domain web site for people to go to, to get your current email address if you haven't emailed them in a while. If you are reading this, I guess you probably do.

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