#avoidingspam

WHOis - when you register a domain the details you put in are displayed in a public directory known as the WHOis directory. This enables the rest of us to see who owns and is running each website. It’s mandatory that you use a real email address, i.e. one that can be sent to and does not bounce. Unless you pay for extra protection your email address is available for all to see and as a result spammers and their robots scrape the data from the directories and begin spamming you relentlessly.

Predictable email addresses - sadly for us spammers are quite sophisticated in their operations, which means that when they know you have registered a new domain they hedge their bets and begin spamming likely inboxes such as info@… or sales@… and so on. Statistically these are the most common email addresses that will be set-up and as spamming is basically free they have nothing to lose and your inbox and potentially your PC to gain!

To help save yourself from spam-hell (and this cause is worse than all others, believe me!) there are a few strategies you can employ to dodge the spammers:

When you register your domain consider paying for identity protection; this masks your contact details for a few pounds each year. If as part of your business you buy a lot of domains and this would not be feasible then create a special email address only for this purpose and refrain from checking it too often in order to keep your blood pressure down.

Consider creating more unusual generic email addresses for your business; rather than info@… you could use helpme@… and so on (please feel free to be more creative than this!).  These will not fall foul of the spammers’ typical algorithms.

Better still, don’t forget to set-up and use a number of Me and My ID email aliases when registering domains or commenting on public forums etc. - these are free of charge.

Even if you do the above you will still get spam, but at least by using Me and My ID you are protecting your real email address and can block individual senders or switch to another alias when necessary.  As well as this:

Don’t ever reply; even when you are furious and sick of it, replying merely tells them your address is active and so you will receive more.

Don’t click unsubscribe; it won’t surprise you to learn that these people play fast and loose with internet marketing laws and often stick a fake unsubscribe link on their email, again to test which accounts are active.

Switch off automatic picture downloads; spammers often send tiny pictures (literally 1px) in their emails, when you open the email they receive a notification saying the attachment has been downloaded and confirming that the address is real. Set your email client or phone to “not download images from the server” (without you pressing a button to do so).

Don’t allow automatic delivery and read receipts; spammers who ask for and receive these receipts are made aware that your email account is active and therefore the level of spamming increases dramatically.