A Kick-Ass Scheme On Fighting Junk E-mail.
Filed under E-mail Marketing
There is no excuse any more.
Everybody is suffering from spam. I just like to share my knowledge in fighting junk e-mail for more than 10 years. With the easy techniques I use now I became completely junk e-mail free for almost two years now.
Here are some principles which solely are less effective but in total sum up all of my experiences which I made in the last couple of years. And all of this principles apply to every Internet user, from occasional to power user.
Rule 1 Never print your proper address online. Never ever. Put your address in Myspace, Facebook or even your own site and you’ll be flooded with junk e-mail within hours. Whenever possible, try to cover or obfuscate your address with java script oder produce a picture out of your address. Coding it like name-at-domain-dot-com is not enough.
Rule 2 Forget about all tools and filters. Don’t trust your ISP’s junk e-mail filters. From complex regular expression patterns and black listing of known bad mail servers, to semi smart Bayes filtering, none of them keeps its promises. They are always behind the current fashion in spamming. The problems with after all are not the spam mails that are not detected but the good mails which are unintentionally hold back or worse deleted.
Rule 3 Use throwaway addresses that can be erased if they begin to pull junk e-mail mails. Search for services which let’s you produce those addresses by a finger tip. Every of this fake addresses is redirected to your main address and you can even respond to them, while your real address is constantly obfuscated. This is by far the best way to communicate with machines, newsletters, shopping sites, etc. And when you get spammed? Easy, just erase the targeted address and that’s it.
Rule 4 Never reply to spam UNDER NO CONDITIONS WHATSOEVER, just delete it. Never let them know that you read and even answer such dirt.
Rule 5 Never even open spam mails. They might infect you with a computer virus or confirm your address automatically in the background. Try to delete the suspicious message right on the mail server.
Rule 6 Never click on the links in spam messages, including unsubscribe links. This will only lead to more spam. Also it is best to not open mails from unknown senders in HTML modus.
Rule 7 Never buy anything from a company that spams. Don’t reward those guys for molesting you. Don’t visit their sites or ask for more information.
Rule 8 Use multiple addresses for different roles. This helps you to identify different sources and transmitters, and grants you filter out more effectively.
Rule 9 Use products where unknown human senders have to identify themselves before their mails go from quarantine to your inbox.
Rule 10 Use automatically generated throwaway addresses for communicating with machines (e.g. newsletters, shops, web2.0)
Rule 11 Control if your e-mail address is visible to spammers by typing it into a search engine.
Rule 12 Use a more complicated e-mail address, that is less likely to receive junk e-mail than one that could be easily created with a simple dictionary-attack. Chose a completely at random generated addresses.
Rule 13 Stop using betrayed addresses. You will never be cleaned from a spammer’s list.
Rule 14 Never reveal your login details to anyone. Not to your wife, not to your best friend and of course not to your co worker.
Rule 15 Always protect yourself the best possible way. New windows patches, an up to date virus protection and a working firewall are a total must.
Rule 16 Don’t use MS Internet Explorer, Microsoft’s Outlook or Outlook Express. They are flawy and always an attacker’s first potential prey.
