Ara Rubyan’s Best Free Articles

We’ve talked about how you can use anti spam software to kill spam once it reaches you.

But what can you do to become invisible to spam in the first place?

Turns out there are couple of techniques that are pretty easy to implement. Make a habit of these and you’ll be a much harder target for spammers to hit.

• Use more than one email address.

  The first one should be for immediate family and friends. The second, for business contacts. The third should be for everything else. And not only that: this one should be disposable.

  What is a disposable address?

  When you give a web site your (disposable) email address, you are giving them an “alias” that corresponds to your main address. By default, all aliases of your email address forward your mail to that real address. But only you know that. The web site that sends mail to the alias only has that address — and not your real one.

  So here’s what you do…

  Use a separate disposable address at each different site. That way if (or when) the spam comes in, you know exactly where it came from. Then, if you like, you can simply shut that alias down — and the spam that goes with it.

  One downside: What to do if you get some valuable email too, like a newsletter? There’s no easy answer to that: with a disposable address, it’s all or nothing from that site. But at least you’ve identified where the spam is coming from and you’ve isolated it to a large degree.

• Disguise your email address.

  Instead of signing your comment at a blog with John@Doe.com, do this instead:

  John@NO_SPAM_Doe.com

  The spam robot (”or spambot”) will harvest a useless address. On the other hand, the humans will simply remove the extra words to reach you.

• Ignore “Delivery Failure” of any message that you didn’t personally send.

  Whenever you see this kind of email, there’s a good chance that you are seeing the outcome of a virus running wild.

  For example…

  Imagine that a virus has infected your Aunt Maureen’s PC.  Maybe it is sending out hundreds of infected emails to everyone in her address book. It happens. What you don’t know is that perhaps YOUR NAME is on the FROM: line.

  Why?

  Because the spammer wants to hide where the spam is coming from. If every email has Aunt Maureen’s name on it, it’s too easy to track it down and stop it. If, on the other hand there is a different name on each spam, it is much harder to stop.

  Which brings us to you, the innocent bystander. Some of these emails will be going to email addresses that are no longer in service. Some of them might be going to email boxes that are full. Whatever the case may be, the email cannot be delivered. And because your name is listed as the “return address,” you’ll receive a notification of delivery failure.

  As long as you aren’t getting hundreds of these messages in a single day (or hour!), you can safely ignore it. [Note: If you ARE getting that many, you might want to scan your PC for viruses and spyware. The spam could be coming from you.]

• Unless the message is from someone in your address book, assume it is spam.

  Most email software can be set to divert all email NOT from someone in your address book into your “Junk” or “Spam” folder. Do it.

  Then here’s what you do next:

  Periodically go in there and browse the accumulated contents. You might find that someone has changed their address, or you are receiving an email newsletter that you actually signed up for. If you want those emails, add the sender to your address list and delete the rest. By the way, this kind of address list is called a whitelist.

• Get a good anti spam program — and use it.

  In other words, don’t just delete your spam — take the time to hit the blacklist button instead. The more patient you are, the better the anti spam software gets. Let it work for you.

  Similarly, don’t disable the anti spam filter (if you use one). No matter how much spam you are getting, you’ll get more if you don’t train your spam filter. The filter is your friend. Let it work for you.

• Do not buy anything from a spammer.

  Nothing. Ever. Just don’t. It only encourages them to send you (and me) more spam.

• Close the browser window after logging out.

  If you are checking your email on the road (say, from a library or coffee shop) you might be using a web-based email service to do so. Be aware that these services will show the name (but not the password) of the last person to log on. This is supposed to be a convenience to you — but instead it is a significant security problem. Solve that problem by always closing the browser window after you log off.

• If you are sending an email to multiple parties, use the BCC option.

  Think about it: if you use the CC option, then everyone you are sending the email to is vulnerable to getting spammed — if the email falls into the hands of a spammer.

  Even if you trust everyone all the time, some email software will automatically add all the names on the CC line to the address book.

  Think of all the people who are receiving this email. Now realize that if any of their PCs gets infected with a virus, everyone in that address book will get a copy of the infected email. Do you really want that? No.

  So take a moment and use the BCC option. Similarly, if you forward an email to someone, first take a minute and remove the email addresses of past recipients from the body of the email.

• Don’t unsubscribe from an email newsletter that you never subscribed to in the first place.

  Sometimes spammers send email to addresses that are made up at random. This is actually easier than getting a list of reliable addresses. The spammer figures that some of the addresses will be undeliverable — but (by chance) a certain percentage will be valid. They’ll know this because the holder of that address will respond to an unwanted newsletter by clicking the “unsubscribe” link at the bottom of the email. Pretty soon, that email address will receive a ton of spam. Don’t fall for that trick.

© 2007 Ara Rubyan. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-No Derivative Works 3.0 License. You have permission to use it if you include the resource information below.

For more articles on stopping spam, visit Ara Rubyan’s Spam Blocker Central.

Ara Rubyan is experienced in training design and delivery and has been developing web based training for more than 10 years. His background in training coupled with his IT knowledge help him to ensure the seamless development of product user training.