How to Prevent Spam ?

Description

SPAM is the use of mailing lists to blanket usenets or private email boxes with indiscriminate advertising messages. Very bad netiquette. Even worse, it’s bad business. The future of marketing online is about customizing products and information for individual users. Anyone who tries to use old mass market techniques in the new media environment is bound to fail.

The below are the steps to avoid a SPAM if you have not MASS MAILED or sent UNSOLICITED MAILS to others. If you have done so and started getting SPAM. Then there is little that can be done to avoid it. Your domain may to be terminated as it puts heavy load in the mail server.

Prevention Methods

[1] USE A SPAM FILTER

While there is no such thing as a perfect filter, anti-spam software can help keep spam at manageable level. If you are linux customer, please enable SPAM Assassin in your cPANEL. If you are a windows customer, please send us the domain that sends spam to you. We will blacklist it in the server side. To report a spam and black list a domain, please click here.

[2] DON’T POST YOUR ADDRESS ON YOUR WEBSITE

It seems like a good idea at the time, but posting your email address on your personal home page is just an invitation to spammers. Spammers and the people who sell spamming as a business have software that “harvests” email addresses from the Net. This software crawls through the Internet seeking text strings that are -something-@-something-.-something-. When it finds one, it catalogs it on a database of other email addresses to be used to send spam.

[3] USE A SECOND EMAIL ADDRESS IN NEWSGROUPS

Newsgroups are the great email address gathering ground for spammers. If you post to a group, you’re going to get spam — it is just a matter of time. So how are you supposed to participate? Use a different email address than the one you use for talking to friends and relatives. In other words, have a public address and a private address. You’ll just have to deal with the spam in your public account.

[4] DON’T GIVE YOUR EMAIL ADDRESS WITHOUT KNOWING HOW IT WILL BE USED

If a website is asking for your email address, they want to use it for something. Be sure you know what. Read the terms of use and privacy statements of any site before telling them your address. Ask yourself some simple questions. Are they going to share or sell my address? Do I want emails from this website? Do I trust them? Is it worth the risk? If you can’t answer these questions satisfactorily, if you can’t find their privacy statement, don’t tell them your address.

[5] NEVER RESPOND TO SPAM

Oh sure, they say they’ll take your name off the list, but they’re lying. What they really want to do is confirm that they’ve got a live address. Also, if you respond, they’ll sell your address to every other spammer on the planet meaning you’ll soon be flooded with even more spam.

[6] NEVER BUY ANYTHING ADVERTISED IN SPAM

The reason that people spam is because they can make money. They make money, like all advertisers, by convincing people to buy a product. If no one buys the things advertised in spam, companies will quit paying spammers to advertise their products.

[7] Block images in HTML messages that spammers use as Web beacons A Web beacon can be a graphic image, linked to an external Web server, that is placed in an HTML-formatted message and can be used to verify that your e-mail address is valid when the message is opened and images downloaded. By default, Outlook is set to block automatic picture downloads. To verify what your automatic download settings are, on the Tools menu, click Options. Click the Security tab, and then click Change Automatic Download Settings. Verify that the Don’t download pictures or other content automatically in HTML e-mail check box is selected.

[8] Turn off automatic processing of meeting requests and read and delivery receipts Spammers sometimes resort to sending meeting requests and messages with delivery receipts requested. Responding to meeting requests and read and delivery receipts automatically makes you vulnerable to Web beacons.

[9] Limit where you post your e-mail address Be cautious about posting your e-mail address on public Web sites, and remove your e-mail address from your personal Web site. If you list or link to your e-mail address, you can expect to be spammed.

[10] Disguise (or “munge”) your e-mail address when you post it to a newsgroup, chat room, bulletin board, or other public places For example, you can give your e-mail address as “s0me0ne@example.c0m” by using the number zero instead of the letter “o.” This way, a person can interpret your address, but the automated programs that spammers use cannot.

[11] Use multiple e-mail addresses for different purposes You might set up one for personal use to correspond with friends, family, or colleagues, and use another for more public activities, such as requesting information, shopping, or for subscribing to newsletters, discussion lists, and newsgroups.

[12] Don’t contribute to a charity based on a request in e-mail Unfortunately, some spammers prey on your good will. If you receive an appeal from a charity, treat it as spam. If it is a charity that you want to support, find their number elsewhere and call them to find out how you can make a contribution.

[13] Don’t forward chain e-mail messages Besides causing more traffic over the line, forwarding a chain e-mail message might be furthering a hoax, and you lose control over who sees your e-mail address