These are how to's for GW Design's clients. These will help you to do the little bit that you need to do to help me develop and maintain your web site.
- Spam - what is it?
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is what we have come to call all unsolicited e-mail. The term is used also in reference to some of the unsavory practices that some web site promoters use to try and trick search engines into giving them a high rank. So really, in a broad sense you can define "spam" as encompassing most unsavory behavior done through the internet and e-mail servers.
- how do we get it?
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~ One way that we get spam is by having a website that has our e-mail address on it. The spammers send out little electronic programs called spiders or robots, and they harvest that little "@" sign from all the pages they "crawl". Then they send out their messages to the resulting list. There is a service that I use to "munge" the e-mail address and so get rid of the @ sign. Please go to http://zamok.crans.org/~raffo/antispam/aem/ . What this does is changes your e-mail address into a form that is not readable by the spamsters spiders.
~ If we belong to a free e-mail service such as Yahoo, Hotmail, AOL, etc... it seems that even if your e-mail address has never been published on a site, that you will get spammed. I don't know why this is, but I would guess that perhaps some hackers hacked into the system and got the addresses. I have just heard too many users of Hotmail complain about spam to not figure that something like this has happened.
~ If we have entered our e-mail into a newsgroup or some other online community, these can be scanned by spammers spiders and find our address that way. - The nature of spam
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These addresses are totally not pre-qualified in any way. Think about that. The cost of sending a spam message is so low, that the spammers can afford to have a HUGE attrition rate. All they need are a few responses to make the program pay for itself. This means that they must have a product that has a potential interest to the masses. If you think about the nature of most spam, it generally targets concerns that most people have. To illustrate: On one end of the spectrum you have fine art. Lets say that a gallery owner in Aspen Colorado wanted to "spam" the internet with his $5,000 pieces of art. Well, the likelihood of him getting any response to his campaign would be about nil since the vast majority of the earth's population cannot afford, nor even appreciate the product. So the product generally has to do with a real general, apply to everyone, concern. Life insurance, low mortgages, HGH, and that king of all spam... pornography.
- What to do once we get it
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Well, this is an interesting question and it is hotly debated. I have read a lot on the subject and the opinions are as varied as they can be. Many people are offended by Spam in their inbox, and feel that there should be legislation to control it. This thought sparks tremendous ideological debates. But I have discovered a way of dealing with it that really takes very little time and is easy to do. This is after configuring my filters in Outlook Express as best I can. Being a web guy, my e-mail address is all over the internet. Consequently I receive all kinds of Spam. So, each morning I start my e-mail download. What the filters allow through usually amounts to somewhere around 30-50 e-mails, every morning. I left click one time on the first one, then hold down the shift key and left click on the last one. Then I scroll through them looking for the ones that I know are from acquaintances. I hold down the ctrl key and de-select these ones, leaving all the unsolicited Spam selected. I then click the "Delete" button, and they all go by-by. This process usually takes about 20 seconds and so my life is only momentarily touched by the problem of spam.
- How do we avoid it
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Don't use those Hotmail-like services. If you have a domain name, you have the ability to have your own e-mail accounts. Most domain owners can have as many e-mail addresses as they would like. Interesting though, most of my clients opt to use Hotmail or some other spam-fest... and I have no idea why. But, even if you have your own domain, you are likely going to want to have your address on your site as a link. This means that the little spidering programs are going to find their "@" that they value so much, and you are going to receive spam. One thing that can be done is to not put in a clickable link but type in something like: 'Benjamin_GalleryWebs.com (please put the asterisk in)'. Admittedly this is an awkward solution at best. It is common practice to have a clickable e-mail link on your contact page. So, at the risk of being redundant, here is the best solution that I have found, so it bears repeating. Please go to http://zamok.crans.org/~raffo/antispam/aem/ . What this does is changes your e-mail address into a form that is not readable by the spamsters spiders.
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A rather large list of search engines and directories to submit your sites to.
- ~ Keyword tooL
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