How
to Reduce Spam
What is Spam?
'Spam' is unsolicited bulk email. To be spam it needs to be both
unsolicited (ie you haven't directly requested it), and sent as
part of a bulk email (although some spamming organisations are trying
to get around this, by using a type of mailmerge to get around this
particular point, despite it still being completely unsolicited
In the UK, any UK business, targeting a UK individual with spam
can be prosecuted and fined. Unfortunately business to business
unsolicited email can't be stopped very easily. Neither can spam
generated and sent from outside the UK. If you have a complaint,
you can make an official report through the Information
Commissioner's Website.
How can I reduce Spam?
As an individual:
- Get yourself a number of email addresses that you can use for
different purposes, thus is it can be easier to delete one email
address, without needing to tell your entire address book that
you've changed.
For Example:
- Use one email address for your very close friends and family,
that you never give out to strangers, and never put into any
online contact forms, etc
- Use a unique email address for signing up to online newsletters
etc
- Never use the 'unsubscribe' option of unsolicited emails
(this will only make the email address more valuable as it
shows you read the email all the way through). Only ever use
the unsubscribe option of opt-in email newsletters and similar,
you've actually requested getting initially, and know precisely
who that person/company is.
One of the easiest ways to get lots and lots of email addresses,
you can change at will, is to actually buy yourself a .co.uk domain
name or similar from somewhere like 123-reg
where for around £7 for two years, you can have your own
personal domain name, and all the email addresses associated with
it.
You can then get virtually as many email address as you like,
forwarding through to any other email address you like (ie so
you can have jason@mynewdomain.co.uk forwarding through to the
email address provided by your internet service provider, that
way, when you change internet providers (ie from BT to NTL or
similar), you don't need to go through your entire address book
to tell everyone).
To describe any part of the above in more detail, please do contact
us.
- For the types of emails you may want or need to publish somewhere
on the web, use one of the free email service providers such as
hotmail,
GoogleMail,
yahoo, etc.
which tend to have free spam filters as part of the service (as
without it, they'd be processing billions more emails everyday!)
- Never send bulk emails to your friends using the To:
or Cc: field. This then displays everyone's email
address to everyone else in the list. Firstly that's like sending
a photocopy of your little black book of addresses to everyone
else in it, every time you do it. Secondly, once an email address
is listed in this way on someone else's computer, when their computer
gets infected by a particular type of virus, it will scan the
entire computer for anything that resembles anything like an email
address (whether there's been direct communication between the
two people or not), and then store all these email addresses on
a big database, to be sold on for fractions of a pence each, many
times in the future.
Whenever you send bulk emails, use the Bcc: field
instead (Blind Carbon Copy), as this will only show to the recipient,
the name and address of the sender, those in the To: or Cc: field,
the actual recipient, but no-one else in the Bcc: field (it actually
gets sent in such a way, the big list of email addresses don't
even appear in the source code of the email.
- Never forward on chain emails.
- Chain Email Petitions
There is no such thing as valid email petitions (where everyone
adds their name to the bottom of the list, and then forwards
it through to another 10 people). The only petitions actually
mean something are those completed in one central location,
on a highly regarded website (such as http://petitions.pm.gov.uk/
). Even if you do find yourself at the 100th person and are
then supposed to forward this on to some listed email address,
you will most definitely find that the email address listed
is no longer valid (and the domain it's associated with, is
now probably swamped with email addresses that aren't valid).
- Email Tracking Software, to win a prize/gift
There is no such thing as email tracking software that automatically
monitors how many people you send an email onto, and then
rewards you with some cash prize / vouchers from Disney, Microsoft,
Marks & Spencer's, etc.
Yes it's true that all emails can be monitored by the Internet
Service Provider for their own legal responsibilities, the
Government (looking out for key words within the content of
emails, or monitoring the activities of certain individuals
they consider terrorist suspects, etc.).
However, just think about it.. How likely do you think some
company will actually pay a lot of money to every single person
that forwards on an email, with the huge number of other very
cheap ways to market their business (at fractions of a pence
per message view, rather than tens or thousands of pounds!)
- Forward this email on to 10 people and good things
will happen...
These types of emails are normally interspersed with some
'quotes' from someone who forwarded it on, and great things
happened to them.. or those who didn't and bad things... The
only way these types of emails will make a difference to what
happens in your life, is what difference it makes to how you
feel about life. If you think positively (being an optimist),
positive things will happen around you. Think negatively (as
a pessimist) and yes, negative things will happen. These types
of emails may have some sort of moving poem or story apparently
written by some 8 year old somewhere, who's 'dying wish...
'. However, some of these emails (even if the original story
may have in part been based on some sort of truth) have been
doing the rounds for years and years and years!
- The person who sent you this email loves you.. send
it back, and to ten other people to show them you love them
too
If you want to share your good thoughts with a friend.. then
contact them directly anyway, and give some specific complement
about why you like them so much. Don't just forward on something
from someone else. Specific complements, such as "You've
really inspired me by how much you give in your time and energy
to the youth service you've been volunteering at for the past
10 years, I know everyone you've reached has been helped in
a massive way, and their lives have all been changed for the
better, as I was one of them..." is much more meaningful
than forwarding on some sort of tacky poem you received from
someone you hardly know!
www.BreaktheChain.org
has got a massive resource (far greater than anything I can list
above) describing all about chain mails. It even has an ongoing
resource of current emails doing the rounds.. so before you forward
on anything that looks too good to be true (as it almost certainly
will be untrue), then just paste some part of the email into any
search engine and you'll see a little of its history, or just
check a website like the one above.
As a business:
- Never send bulk emails to your clients using the To:
or Cc: field. This then displays everyone's email
address to everyone else in the list. Firstly that's like sending
a photocopy of your entire client list to everyone else in it,
every time you do it. Secondly, once an email address is listed
in this way on someone else's computer, when their computer gets
infected by a particular type of virus, it will scan the entire
computer for anything that resembles anything like an email address
(whether there's been direct communication between the two people
or not), and then store all these email addresses on a big database,
to be sold on for fractions of a pence each, many times in the
future.
Whenever you send bulk emails, use the Bcc: field
instead (Blind Carbon Copy), as this will only show to the recipient,
the name and address of the sender, those in the To: or Cc: field,
the actual recipient, but no-one else in the Bcc: field (it actually
gets sent in such a way, the big list of email addresses don't
even appear in the source code of the email.
- Train your staff on how they can personally help to minimise
spam (directing them to the page above if you like, or you can
access a host of books and educational matter on the subject on
the web, or at your local bookshop).
- When first getting your new business domain, never use the email
addresses info@ mail@ sales@ webmaster@
As soon as your domain name is listed in various search engines
and domain name lists (which are of course good for your search
engine rankings), spam groups will automatically send junk emails
to those email addresses.
Try to be slightly more creative and use things like 'enquiries'
'information' etc.
- Never put an email address in it's plain text form anywhere
on a web page, anywhere!
There is now a huge bunch of web based 'robots' who very quickly
scan the text and source codes of websites around the world, finding
anything that resembles an email address.
Most commonly, they look out for the @ symbol, and then will pull
of the few words either side of it, store this in a massive database,
and sell it on to anyone who's willing to pay a pittance for it.
Similarly be very carefully where any digital versions of your
brochures or posters may appear, as pdf documents for example,
which show your full email address. The easiest way around this,
is for any publicity with which you want to digitalise and put
on the web, always swap the @ symbol for the word at, 'at', (at),
*at* or similar. For example emails(at)ourcompanydomain.co.uk.
Most human users will quickly recognise what to swap around for
themselves, although as the (at) technique seems the most common,
I don't expect it will be long until a robot is designed to pick
this up too.
Adding extra characters in a different colour, just before your
domain name, with instructions beneath the email address, is a
pretty effective way. For example emails@SPAMourcompanydomainname.co.uk
with instructions for humans to remove the SPAM,
is also pretty effective.
- If you're a largely publicised company receiving a lot of unsolicited
enquiries to various key staff members, and you have a list of
staff (with their first name and surname listed somewhere on your
website), try not use the classic firstname.surname@ourcompanydomain.com
as these will often be tried by unsolicited callers trying to
get in contact.
As a web designer (or working with a web designer):
- Never put an email address in it's plain text form anywhere
on a web page, anywhere! This includes within the front end text,
and within the html source code (including online forms, and 'mailto'
tags).
There is now a huge bunch of web based 'robots' who very quickly
scan the text and source codes of websites around the world, finding
anything that resembles an email address. Most commonly, they
look out for the @ symbol, and then will pull of the few words
either side of it, store this in a massive database, and sell
it on to anyone who's willing to pay a pittance for it. From experience,
the various Nigerian email scams were one of the first to start
pulling off email address in this way around 10 years ago. Of
course now it's hugely popular by many many more (particularly
those trying to sell various pharmaceutical drugs, or 'share option'
warnings / recommendations.
I once had an email address I'd given to a popular
business group, appear (without my initial permission) on their
'database of members' directory. It was only up for about 2
weeks before I'd realised, and had it taken down. Unfortunately,
due to the nature of that particular email address I couldn't
block it entirely, close it down, or reject all email sent to
it.. However, I never replied to any email address sent to it,
nor even read them after the first couple of weeks of it appearing.
The number of spam emails started small enough at about 1-2
per day, within a week this was up to 5-6 per day (which was
when I completely stopped using it). However, around a year
on, I decided to have a quick look at how many spam emails were
waiting for me, so cleared my inbox for the onslaught. Amazingly,
despite never having replied to any email, nor even read them..
over the course of the year, there were over 10,000 emails waiting,
and I was receiving on average (from the email history), around
300 spam emails every single day as that particular email address
propagated itself through various spam list databases!
I've personally be using this particular technique of email encryption
on websites for around the past 10 years. Only once has any email
address used in this way, ever been picked up by some sending
spam emails (this was when someone manually went through a website
I manage, and manually pulled off all the email addresses listed.
Who then used it to send unsolicited emails from two UK companies
to the individuals listed. The companies were immediately reported
to the information commissioners and further action was taken
against them! Those email addresses have never been spammed again!.
- Never put an email address in it's plain text form anywhere
on a web page, anywhere!
- There are a huge bunch of web based 'robots' who very quickly
scan the text and source codes of websites around the world,
finding anything that resembles an email address.
Most commonly, they look out for the @ symbol, and then will
pull of the few words either side of it, store this in a massive
database, and sell it on to anyone who's willing to pay a
pittance for it.
- Be very carefully where any digital versions of your client's
brochures or posters may appear on the web, as pdf documents
for example, which show the full email address as plain text,
within the readable document (so do edit any pdf documents
to hide the email address, before you upload it to any website).
- If for whatever reason, you don't want to use the method
above for encrypting the email address in ASCII code, the
easiest way around the common problem of the at symbol, is
for any publicity with which you want to digitalise and put
on the web, always swap the @ symbol for the word at, 'at',
(at) or similar. For example emails(at)ourcompanydomain.co.uk.
Most human users will quickly recognise what to swap around
for themselves, although as the (at) technique seems the most
common, I don't expect it will be long until a robot is designed
to pick this up too.
- Adding extra characters in a different colour, just before
your domain name, with instructions beneath the email address,
is a pretty effective way. For example emails@SPAMourcompanydomainname.co.uk
with instructions for humans to remove the SPAM,
is also pretty effective.
- If you're managing the emails of a largely publicised company
receiving a lot of unsolicited enquiries to various key staff
members, and you have a list of staff (with their first name and
surname listed somewhere on your website), try not use the classic
firstname.surname@ourcompanydomain.com as these will often be
tried by unsolicited callers trying to get in contact.
If you have any queries about any of the above, do get
in contact.
| Portfolio | Contact
Us
|
