Seeking info on spammers

For what it's worth, I think that once you are getting spam it's too late.

On my personal accounts I never get spam. Not one.

Spam falls into "prevention is better than a cure" for me.

On the accounts that I do not protect (some can't be as they ahve to be public) I get gobs of spam (by the thousands).

How do you protect an account against spammers?

1) don't use a free email address
2) Do not use an easy to guess one (e.g. info@.. sales@.. webmaster@...) because some spammers actually guess at emails
3) Do not use it to register to any site (unless you know for a FACT that they won't share it).
4) Don't let friends put you on un-hidden mass mailings.
5) Do not put it on any web page.


There are some more sofisticated tactics I use but those are the basics. I never use SPAM filters and never get spam unless I want to.

Crap...my e-mail is already on my public webpage, and it does bring in business. You may be right, it's probably too late.

Cav, there are a bunch of spamblockers that work with POP accounts. Here's A List from PC World magazine. All of 'em have flaws, but a few of 'em are better than nothing. One thing you can do is set up a folder in OE for your "trusted correspondents", say certain selected folks, or even all the folks, from your own OE addressbook, then set mail rules to direct emails from your trusted folks to that folder. Then just check your "Inbox" once in a while to clear it out and to retrieve anything you actually want that might have gotten in there. BTW ... my "Mail Rule #1" is that any message with "FWD" in the subject line goes straight to the trashcan.

When you need to provide contact through a webpage the best way is to use forms. For example, if you go to the contact page here you'll notice that there's no way to see what emails the forms will be sent to.

This means people only get your address if you reply to them, and spiders that harvest emails for spammers can't get it.

I don't think your free host has any scripting language available so you might not be able to implement this without resorting to a remotely hosted service.

If you go to the portal there's a section on remotely hosted web services under web development. They are free but come with limitations of volume (unless you are getting a few hundred of the emails a month through your site you should be ok).

But if you must put the address there without hiding it behind a mail form use javascript to separate it. Then the email will be compiled on the fly when the users's browser parses the script.

Here's one such script, not fool proof but it foils most of the email harvesting bots:

http://search.able2know.com/Web_Development/Scripts/JavaScript/Miscellaneous/Non-Spiderable_Mailto_Links_L1903/

Here's my 2-cents. Earthlink's Spamblocker seems to work really, really well. My wife and kids have accounts there and they rarely get any true spam. At work, however, I'm getting penis enlargement offers and online pharmacist offers and you name it I get it on a regular basis.

Thanks Timber and Craven, I'll have my wife look at the stuff. She does IT, and I really know nothing about computers. Craven, I will be going to a paid host this year for the website, with a proper designer, so hopefully that will help in terms of implementing code and what not.