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Protecting your email from spam bots

These steps are best applicable if you have unlimited emails you can set up and exchange at your will, - or even if you have a catch-all email available and also access to the Control panel at your servers.
But I'd assume it can be modified to your personal circumstances.

STEPS:
  1. Code each of your emails, or at least those important ones, so you know where did they come from, for example like for Google AdWords you can have: google-aw AT whatever your domainname dot com is. For Joe Bloe ezine you will have joe-bloe AT yourdomain name dot com. For contact you can have: diane1 AT yourdomain dot com.
    This serves 2 purposes: 1) you will Know instantly who is selling/giving away your email address 2) you can get rid easily of that email Permanently whenever needed without affecting those other ones.

  2. Set up new emails and encrypt them with javascripts below so no spam bot can read them. You could also use cgi email encryption, or use any of the email Scramblers/Encryptors programs available on the Net.

  3. Get rid off the old spammery emails right on your servers. Logon to your Control panel, and find out where you have the option of setting up email filters. Then follow the instruction there to tell the server that any email which is coming to your account and has that old no longer wanted email in its Header = like To: 'not-wanted-anymore-spam AT yourdomain dot com' to Discard/Delete/Nuke or whatever it right away so you will never even see it, nor download it. And it won't even take a space on the server.

    -------------------------------------------> OPTIONAL STEP: HIGHLY RECOMMENDED <---------------------------------------

  4. Get a Mailwasher email preview program and install it. This will allow you to preview your emails on the servers Without having to download them first! Mailwasher allows you to Read the whole message, See the Complete header and source code of it, Blacklist the spam (has option known spammers pre-flagged right away from Spamcop and other databases) And the most important: BOUNCE BACK the Unwanted email so it seems your email is No longer in service! (You can even Bounce back that email as many times you wish, so if some low-life sends you 372 messages to every possible name he could come up with in a few seconds you can send him back 372 bounce-backs, or 3,720 so he Will notice ;-))
    You can also add similar filters like the one on your servers so anything which comes From the known spam service like "@seznam.cz" will go straight to black hole and you never ever see it. And yes, Mailwasher even has a virus protector in it, and many other features.
    To me there isn't better email sorting program on the Net, for those of us who don't like some "big brother" taking care of our email, and I don't think I could exist without it any more - thank you Nick (and Jean-Pierre if you still have him) from the bottom of my heart!
    You have option of Free MailWasher Pro download to try it out, or get a Free Version for one account
    And yes, it is available for you Mac users also: MailWasher Pro for the Mac info

    -------------------------------------------------> END OF OPTIONAL STEP <-----------------------------------------------

  5. Enjoy your email freedom again!

Ok, ok, I admit you still Will get "some spam" as there are individuals on the Net who have obviously nothing else to do in their puny lives but browsing the Net and writing down emails manually, then selling/adding them to some lists - but that's way you Code your emails so in case some of your emails will get eventually into the spam carousals you send it to black hole of the cyberspace automatically. But usually you will have to do this only once/year or 2-3 yrs if ever, so it definitely is worthy to set up. I have some emails which are on some of my sites for many years, and haven't gotten one spam! Even they are encrypted just by OnPage javascript.
Also the filters don't work for BCC or spoofed emails - well, what do we have Mailwasher for, right? ;-)

However: I do not have to let Somebody Else to decide which email I want to read and which one I don't! and don't have to be afraid that that important email from Google or any other directory/service will never reach me because I just did not "white-listed" (whatever that is) all 3,000 emails I could Not possibly think off!

Also, if you are lucky enough to be on Linux Apache CPanel you have many means of having your emails forwarded, filtered, send straight to blackhole or even bounced back right on the servers level.
(of course it may be possible other Control Panels systems give you the same options, but I just haven't found anything better yet that CPanel)



Here is one of the OnPage javascript which will show like this:


Click inside the window below, use the button or use your cursor to highlight the script, copy (Control-c or Command-c) the script and paste it (Control-v or Command-v) into a new file in your text editor (such as Note Pad or Simple Text) and save (Control-s or Command-s). Then modify it to your needs and copy to your page where ever you need.


Here is another OnPage javascript which shows

Click inside the window below, use the button or use your cursor to highlight the script, copy (Control-c or Command-c) the script and paste it (Control-v or Command-v) into a new file in your text editor (such as Note Pad or Simple Text) and save (Control-s or Command-s). Then modify it to your needs and copy to your page where ever you need.




If you prefer your email encrypted in HTML here is a nifty tool which will encrypt your email - courtesy of aadconsulting.com
Email Link Creator Freeware

And another script - courtesy of Bill Benac from http://www.faketp.com/safemail/ which is similar to the one I am using at the bottom of my pages.

There are many more email encrytors/scramblers on the Net, free and paid - it doesn't usually matter which one you use - just USE it! and your spam will decrease significantly!


If you want a simple to edit Off Page small javascript like the one I have below, click here to download the zipped version (1KB) which you can modify to your own needs. Unzip it, open in your NotePad/EditPad/NoteTab or any other ASCII editor, modify whatever you need, (replace the "mysite.com" info with your own) Then save it under Your desired javascript name with the extension .js, (i.e. "mydomain.js") upload it to your server and put the "calling script" below with the name of the saved javascript file on each page on the spot you want to have that info displayed, i.e.:

<SCRIPT LANGUAGE="JavaScript" SRC="mydomain.js"></script>

And then any time you need to change anything (email or year or phone or whatever...) just open the javascript source "mydomain.js", edit, re-load the edited javascript file, and voila - instand update on all pages which have the above calling script.



Of course there is always an option to use Forms for Contact on your site - and that should elimitate most of the spam, unfortunately there still are sites/services on the Net whihch do require an email from you, some of them even displaying it publicly for all spambots heydays! = see Whois registry as the Number One. So either buy a privacy if it's possible or put some disposable non-sense there.

Update! Nowadays even the Forms are not safe as some spammers already figured out how to hijack them. Stay tuned for more info about how to protect your forms. The simplest way is to scramble/encrypt the code, but for how long this will protect the Forms from those new more sophisticated spam-bots I don't know.


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