stopping spam

[tansy]

Darren...thank you...I understood all of that!!!

I shall be changing my email addresses...good time of year as it can go in the christmas cards when they go out

Now do you think you could have a look at my offer I made re building web sites and do the same again for building a web site...you will then be promoted to the forum's knight in shinning armour by Maisy & I !!

[Darren]

Tansy, wow a knight in shining armour, I like the sound of that

I am actually writing a set of articles on web design, I'm no professional myself, but hopefully I'll be able to pass on some of my knowledge and you can also learn from where I have gone wrong.

If Paolo doesn't mind I'll post some of the articles on the forum (Paolo let me know what you think!) I'm in the middle of writing one now, and hope to have it proof-read and completed after Christmas.

Darren

[paolo]

Darren,

Articles on web design would be very welcome. If anyone else fancies posting an article on anything, please go ahead (as long as you comply with forum rules).

About your 'shinning' armour - is that medieval football gear?

[sleekitbeastie]

Set up free email accounts

Do you really want to change e-mail address everytime you get an attack of the spasm? This loses contacts who have kept your address for future reference.

Create an HTML form

This is the method beloved of listing sites. It works well for them as the build a database of enquirers. I get a small but significant percentage of irritating mails to which I can’t reply as a surprising number of people mistype their own e-mail address. This won’t happen with an e-mail link as entry of the return address is automatic.

SPAM software

A must

Spam blocking websites

This sounds good but I haven’t tried it.

Create a small image the same colour as your background…

I don’t like the idea of asking people to retype an e-mail address when you can do it for them – and it is not at all access friendly for visually impaired/colour blind readers.

[helen]

I have run an anti spam software on Outlook for about 2 months now, you can download it free from
http://www.spamfighter.com/
The way I understand it, it blocks known spam and then if you get a spam from a new spammer through to your inbox, you click on a block button which then blocks it universally through all the people who use spam fighter. After a month they ask you to subscribe or you can carry on using it for free as a 'personal' user and it just adds a footnote to your outgoing emails which says that spamfighter is operating on your system - as an advert for them. I had tried various other spam blockers without much success, but this seems the most effective and has been a godsend to me as I was worried sick about my daughter seeing one of the rather explicit photos which were coming through to my inbox, without me even opening the email! I now get perhaps one spam a week that gets through.

[DivineMrsM]

We use Mailwasher. I get very little spam (having your own domain helps there I reckon), but what does appear shows up in Mailwasher in text format (or with images blocked) for me to delete or blacklist before I hit "receive" in Outlook Express.

It's also useful for spotting viruses and deleting them before they hit your machine. As a regular eBay trader, my email address must be on thousands of people's computers internationally and as a result, I get all their viruses. Now when I look at Mailwasher and see the 20 or so daily emails with a content size of 43kb (or however files are measured ) then I know it's a virus and dump it straight away.

I believe that Mailwasher is free. Darling husband sorts that kind of thing out and he's off on a stag weekend right now so I can't ask him.

I like the suggestion of using the site name as the address - nifty. Must put that into practise.

Ooh I like this forum

[A-two]

I don't know which of the steps I took actually worked in reducing spam but I have reduced it massively ... so far

I have to thank you for this as it motivated me to tackle the 100+ spam a day. Starting with my dial-up connection at RCN.com, which I've had for years, and is just a back-up to my always on cable connection, I decided to get rid of it. Customer support convinced me to keep it, promising they did not sell their database and that if I changed email address, that would solve the problem, so I did. The fact that they reduced monthly charges by 50% helped (why didn't they offer that before?). Anyway, miraculously, 98% of spam disappeared overnight. Suddenly I have an extra hour or two or day available!

The feeling of smugness lasted about 2 days, when suddenly a new spam popped into my email box addressed to the newly created email address. Now, this new email address was not one that existed anywhere in cyberspace. Being only a back up, I had not given it to anyone, not even family, neither had i even received confirmation from RCN that I had created it. The only place is existed on my system was in the outlook account set up, where I had switched send and receive accounts. In short, this email did not exist anywhere except in my head and in RCN's database.

This scared me - if RCN were to be believed and they repeatedly insisted they did not share email addresses, then my own system was compromised, so i went on a hunt for Trojan Horse, key logger, virus etc. More than 3 hours later, I felt confident to claim my system and all 140,000 files on it was clean, so I got back onto the ISP, RCN and asked them for an exlpanation. They could not provide me with a logical explanation, refuted they were the source of spam and denied any responsibility. An argument ensued which ended with my saying, "just close the account". They said this was not possible until Monday, but we lost dial-up connection within hours, so obviously the connection was disabled, but the spam continued to arrive in ever increasing numbers.

Finally, today, I got a phone call from RCN to confirm they had closed the account as per my request. If I didn't have a life, I'd be tempted to register www.rcn-sucks.com and explain my reasons in full, but as it is, I'll probably use the extra hour or so every day more productively, learning about Java and how to get rid of the minute amount of spam I am still receiving through the vacation rental contact button.

Thanks for your help and Merry Christmas.

Joanna
www.propertyangels.com

[paolo]

The fact that they reduced monthly charges by 50% helped (why didn't they offer that before?).

It is well worth calling up your ISP and saying you are looking to reduce your monthly spend and would like to know if they have any cheaper products, as you can get your connection cheaper elsewhere. They will immediately offer to cut your tariff. Like Joanna I just got an instant 50% discount.

Joanna,

I think there is an explanation that would exonerate RCN. Spammers do send out emails to randomly generated addresses, so that may be how you got yours. If you then unsubscribe, or if there is an image in the email, that can tell the spammer your address is 'live'. Then you get onto their spamming lists.

[livinginitaly]

Spammers do send out emails to randomly generated addresses, so that may be how you got yours. If you then unsubscribe, or if there is an image in the email, that can tell the spammer your address is 'live'. Then you get onto their spamming lists.

Excellent point .... here's another tip that i don't think has been mentioned.

If you use Outlook or something similar, disable the email 'preview' option so all you see in the inbox is a list of email. This prevents any 'graphics' from loading and informing the 'spammers'.

I think we can all spot a 'spam' message now from the address or subject ..... mine generally consist of 'hair restorer', weight loss and viagra (whoever said this was 'random'?!)

[sleekitbeastie]

If you use Outlook or something similar, disable the email 'preview' option so all you see in the inbox is a list of email. This prevents any 'graphics' from loading and informing the 'spammers'.

Quite right - however if you use the latest version of Outlook (2003) don't panic as it defaults to not download the graphics even when the pre-view pane is on. Finally Microsoft got something right.

[A-two]

3 months later......I am following up on the suggestion to replace the visible email address on my website with Javascript to reduce spam (which is now building again). Unfortunately, it didn't work for me.

As suggested, I replaced the code starting with "<a href=" mailto:...." etc with:-

<script language=javascript>
<!--
var contact = "aaa"
var email = "bbb"
var emailHost = "ccc"
document.write("<a href=" + "mail" + "to:" + email + "@" + emailHost+ ">" + contact + "</a>" + " ")
//-->
</script>

I tried it both ways, with the commercial at, then tried replacing the at with "String.fromCharCode(64)"

I am working in Dreamweaver, and put the text I want to see, which is "contact us", in "aaa" position, splitting the email address between "bbb" and "ccc" as instructed, but now it is not visible at all on the page in Design View. Is there something in Dreamweaver I need to enable for it to recognize the javascript, or where am I going wrong?

Thanks in advance and Happy Easter!

Regards,
Joanna

www.southold-beach-house.com

[paolo]

Joanna,

That didn't work for me either and I didn't know how to fix it so I tried this tool which worked:

http://rumkin.com/tools/mailto_encoder/simple.php

You enter the email address, and also any link text you want instead of the address (e.g. 'click here to email me'). This tool generates the code for you to copy and paste into your site's html code.

[livinginitaly]

Hi Joanna,

Can you see the 'Email Us' button on this menu? .... it's done using a similar method.

http://www.normandybeachrental.com

If javascript is disabled in your browser it should show a warning message.

[rich_sipe]

You won't see the Javascript code in Dreamweaver. Hit F-12 to preview the page and you should see the mailto magically appear. The Javascript code is outputting to the browser and it occurs in-line while the page is processing so you must process the page to see its magic.

[A-two]

Thank You!

Joanna