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Unsolicited email is commonly called spam and it can be a major
nuisance. Here are some suggestions to avoid being affected adversely by spammers.
eMail Spammers - Greedy
and Ruthless
A common practice for email spammers is to use e-mail address
harvesting software to "crawl" the web searching
for web sites and grab e-mail address links from web sites. The email addresses are added to mailing lists and may be sold or even distributed for free to other spammers. If you have an email address listed
on your web site, it is only a matter of time until you are
bombarded with advertisements for everything from vitamins
to Viagra. Filtering through hundreds of e-mail messages every
day just to find a few messages that are from customers can
waste a lot of your time AND your chances of receiving computer
viruses are increased dramatically when your email address
is posted on your web site.
Eliminate Email Addresses - Use Contact Forms
Eliminate all email addresses and email links from web pages to avoid having your email address harvested by spammers. Use a contact form instead. Customers can make initial contact through the form page. Then you can reply via e-mail and they can reply to your
message and save your e-mail address in their address book.
FormMail.php is a popular form script, but it uses a hidden field to set the email address where the form will be sent. The email address in the hidden field can be harvested by spammers and due to it's popularity FormMail has become a target for hackers. It is best to use a form script that does not require any email addresses in the web page. One form script that does this is Phorm. If you are using AShop Deluxe, eMerchant can be added to the shopping cart. eMerchant includes a spam proof contact form which posts directly to the eMerchant inbox and avoids email entirely. We also offer a webmail program called AShopMail, which includes a spam proof contact form.
Bounce Messages Not Addressed To An E-mail Identity
Many times spammers don't even
grab legitimate email addresses. They might simply add your domain
to a mailing list with common email identities such as info@yourdomain or sales@yourdomain. One way to avoid receiving spam this way is to use non-standard email identity names. In addition, set the mail server for your domain to
bounce messages that are not addressed to a legitimate mailbox.
Note: AShop
Web Hosting plans include an option to reject mail that
is not addressed to a specific mailbox. A canned reply can optionally be
sent to the sender advising them that
the address is undeliverable. Most spammers use forged return addresses so they will not receive the undeliverable message, but legitimate senders will then have an opportunity to correct the address.
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