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Stopping Spam
Before it Starts
Virginia
Business
November 2003
You
get to work early in the morning ready to get a jump-start
on the day. While waiting for your computer to boot
up, you get a cup of coffee and make a mental list of
everything you’d like to get done before noon.
But when you get back to your computer, there’s
an unwelcome surprise waiting for you — dozens,
if not hundreds, of e-mail messages, most of which are
junk mail from senders you’ve never heard of. What
can you do? On the one hand, a mass purging of every
file is out of the question — what if there’s
a message from your boss or from an important client
buried in there? On the other hand, browsing through
some of those messages is not for the faint of heart
— cyberspam can get pretty racy.
Excedent
Technologies of Vienna, a provider of e-mail hosting,
anti-virus and spam filters, has come up with these
recommendations on how to keep the junk out of your
employees’ mailboxes:
1.
Create alias e-mail addresses that can be replaced.
All Internet users should have an alias or generic address
that they can use for online purchases, as well as posting
to discussion lists, news groups or message boards.
Plus, since spammers use automated scripts to obtain
e-mail addresses from Web sites, only generic e-mails
should be posted on your company’s Web site.
2.
Do not give your e-mail address away unless you are
confident that the recipient is a trusted party.
If it is an optional request from a third party, leave
it blank. If it is required, it is best to use your
temporary e-mail alias address or an e-mail account
that you have with a free provider such as Yahoo! or
Hotmail.
3.
Do not unsubscribe from spam that you receive. Many
spammers use unsubscribe requests to verify that e-mail
addresses are in fact legitimate. Once you unsubscribe,
they know the e-mail was received. This actually makes
your e-mail address more valuable to spammers.
4.
Do not rely on AOL or other generic e-mail addresses
for business purposes. Many companies that provide
free e-mail services make money by selling e-mail addresses
and subscriber information to spammers, advertisers
and other third party marketing organizations.
5.
Do not reply to or forward long chain letters that you
receive via e-mail. Some spammers may collect e-mail
addresses from chain letters that are passed through
hundreds of groups of e-mail users.
6.
Do not signup for any service that claims to be a “Do
Not Spam List,” similar to the FCC’s “Do
Not Call List.” Many of these services are
fraudulent and actually may lead to your e-mail address
being added to more spam lists.
7.
Use obfuscation techniques when publishing your e-mail
address on Web pages. Spammers use automated programs
to crawl the Web in search of e-mail addresses. Therefore
it is a good idea to use HTML tricks to make your e-mail
address unreadable by these programs. For example, you
can embed HTML comment tags inside of your e-mail address,
use character encoding techniques such as HTML escaping
and URI encoding, or use JavaScript to write out the
address.
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