Fed up and tired of opening your email account every day only to find countless amounts of uninvited emails? Email that includes bold and annoying statements such as: “product recommended by Mary “, gold “earn $ 6,000,000,000.00 overnight … ” gold “buy Viagra now. “.. and so on?
Tired of going through your “junk” filter every day just to catch an email or two that you were expecting to receive, but were buried in spam pages? If you are the victim of any of these spam problems, read on for several HUGE tips on how to prevent spam in your business.
Create an alternate email address by including the company, URL, etc.
As a small business owner or employee (depending on your job duties), you may have to provide your email address for many different reasons. Signing up for: webinars, newsletters, business directories, search engines, or other products or services that capture your data can become a BIG problem!
Most companies implement a “privacy policy”, which generally sets out how your personal information will not be used to spam you or to disclose your information to third parties. Unfortunately, many companies cannot be trusted to safeguard your data, and several companies forward your email address and name to many other third parties, greatly increasing the amount of spam you will receive. Always use an alternate “throwaway” email address, which will be used when registering for anything online; including subscriptions and reports. Creating and using an alternate email address will go a long way in preventing spam in your business.
When you register a domain, get a “private registration” so that no one can see your email address and contact information, to help prevent spam.
Private domain name registration is a BIG necessity, in your quest to prevent spam. When you register a domain name, your contact information, or the contact information of the person who registered the site, can be displayed to the general public. In other words, a person can log into a website such as the “Whois” directory (look it up on your favorite engine), then enter their URL and their contact information will be displayed for all to see. Imagine the ability of a spammer to access this website or similar; find your REAL name, your REAL email address and quickly start spamming silly stuff outside of you!
By registering your domain under “private registration”, your contact information will not be shown when a spammer decides to get more information about your company. It is important to note that although a private record “hides” your contact information, there are ways for expert spammers to bypass this barrier.
Set the spam inbox to “high” depending on the software you are using
An obvious but overlooked feature in most people’s email software is the “spam” or “filtering” option. Although the name of the spam filter varies depending on the company that created the software (or website), they generally all serve the same purpose. Having the spam filter set too low can result in a lot of junk mail in your inbox. Having a spam filter that is too high can lead to many of the emails that you really want to receive to be marked as spam.
Personally, I recommend setting the filtering to “high”, rather than low or moderate. This will capture most, if not all, spam, but it will also capture many of your legitimate emails. You can create “rules” in your email settings to allow email from certain domains (URLs) or certain names to always go to your inbox. If your spam filter is disabled or set to “low”, you should definitely make the necessary change today to help prevent spam from flooding your inbox.
Try not to create “easy” email addresses, such as one that uses the first letter of your full first and last name.
Spammers are smart and resourceful people most of the time. Let’s say your first and last name appear on your company’s website. If your name is John Smith and the name appears on your website, a spammer will try variations of your name such as: jsmith (at) yourcompany.com, or johnsmith (at) yourcompany.com, or john (at) yourcompany.com, or john (at) yourcompany.com, or john (at) yourcompany.com .com.
If any of those email addresses really belong to YOU, guess who will get a ton of spam to expect? If you! Always remember to keep in mind the fact that spammers can “guess” your email address, whenever you create an email address or have you create one for your business or company. This will be a very important step to prevent spam from flooding your account!
Delete cookies from your internet browser daily (spammers can track stored cookies)
A seldom used tactic in the fight to prevent spam is to change your Internet browser’s “history” settings. When your Internet browser stores cookies and files on your computer, websites load faster and many websites “remember” information that you may have submitted during your last visit to the website. History settings also allow an Internet browser to store websites that have been visited in the last hour, day, week, and even months.
Unfortunately, as convenient as it may seem to keep your history settings set to 30, 60, and 90 days, keeping cookies stored in your browser (on your computer) can actually increase the spam you receive.
Believe it or not, cookies can be “read” by the websites you visit, spyware and adware installed on your computer, and in other ways. Cookies contain information about your browsing habits on the Internet, as well as personal information that you may not want to be shared with the online community in general; including: which sites were visited, how long each site was visited, the products / services / theme of the sites visited, and more.
Would you like a spammer to have such detailed information about your viewing habits? Can you imagine having received countless emails directly related to the products you buy and the websites you visit? Always delete cookies regularly from your internet browser or disable your browser’s ability to store cookies and history entirely.
