Solving the unwanted email problem
February 27th 2008 09:15
Unsolicited emails can be the Bain of the internet for example you put in a link with your email address for a blog or a webpage and very soon you get a flood of unwanted emails.
The problem is mostly related to Email harvesters {spambots}. These email spam bots crawl the internet via search engines to find and extract email addresses from webpages. Other email harvesting techniques us the old sign up routine , where by you sign up for a monthly specials information etc.
You can limit and in some cases stop email harvesters by using some simple text sybols.
Email addresses always contain an @ symbol. Most spambots do a pattern-search for likely combinations of letters (joebloggs@someplace.com). Mostly they just search for the @ character and grab all the letters on each side on the assumption that it's a valid email address.
The trick is to keep email address for humans to use and beat the email harvesters at their own game.
There are many propertery software programs that can alter your email for you., frankly they are not worth the money you are better off doing it manually. The most common approach to block email harvesting is to remove the @ symbol. If you eliminate the @ from email addresses then most spambots won't be able to recognise that the text is actually an email address.
For example could be joebloggs AT someplace DOT com
Joebloggs(at)someplace.com
Joebloggs @someplace.com
You might consider "masking" your email address. Masking involves putting a word or phrase in your email address so that it will fool a harvesting computer program, but not a person.
An example is joebloggs@ REMOVE.somelace.com Another method is replacing test with an image. This technique involves creating a graphic or screen capture of your email address text in jpg, png or gif formats and display that picture instead of the actual address string. Robots and spiders can't read the text that is embedded in the image.
The problem with this approach is that anyone who wants to email you will have to manually type in your address .
The problem is mostly related to Email harvesters {spambots}. These email spam bots crawl the internet via search engines to find and extract email addresses from webpages. Other email harvesting techniques us the old sign up routine , where by you sign up for a monthly specials information etc.
You can limit and in some cases stop email harvesters by using some simple text sybols.
Email addresses always contain an @ symbol. Most spambots do a pattern-search for likely combinations of letters (joebloggs@someplace.com). Mostly they just search for the @ character and grab all the letters on each side on the assumption that it's a valid email address.
The trick is to keep email address for humans to use and beat the email harvesters at their own game.
There are many propertery software programs that can alter your email for you., frankly they are not worth the money you are better off doing it manually. The most common approach to block email harvesting is to remove the @ symbol. If you eliminate the @ from email addresses then most spambots won't be able to recognise that the text is actually an email address.
For example could be joebloggs AT someplace DOT com
Joebloggs(at)someplace.com
Joebloggs @someplace.com
You might consider "masking" your email address. Masking involves putting a word or phrase in your email address so that it will fool a harvesting computer program, but not a person.
An example is joebloggs@ REMOVE.somelace.com Another method is replacing test with an image. This technique involves creating a graphic or screen capture of your email address text in jpg, png or gif formats and display that picture instead of the actual address string. Robots and spiders can't read the text that is embedded in the image.
Masking your email address using an image
The problem with this approach is that anyone who wants to email you will have to manually type in your address .
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Comment by Joanne Fedler
Secret Writers Business
Jo
Comment by CarlCan
Astroearth
I agree the problem has reached proportions.
The garbage some emails come up with is really annoying.
I have several email accounts. I only give my private emails to family and friends the rest of my other email accounts are relegated to scientific articals and a few get used for subcribing to articals etc.
Carl