by: Balraj Dhaliwal
Everbody hates spam! I am sure spammers hate getting spam too,
but they still continue to dish it out. Why? Because it is still
effective. Believe it or not, many of us still click on the
links or follow-up with the spam message. As long as we continue
to do this, spam will exist. If everybody understood this and
paid no attention to spam, the spammers will eventually give up
because it costs them realy money to send out emails. It is hard
to quantify what the cost of sending out one, two or fifty
emails is, but 1 million or 5 million emails certainly has a
cost that is not negligible. When the payback starts to get so
small that the spammers cannot make a decent living, they will
find something else to do. This day will come and I cannot wait
for it to arrive.
In the meantime, what can we do about it. Well, I am not going
to tell you that there is a perfect solution that will stop all
spam, but what I will tell you is that there is a way to reduce
the problem and manage it effectively using the 7 steps outlined
below.
Step #1: Get Your Own Domain Name
Fighting spam effectively starts with getting your own domain
name. For example if your name is Andy Williams, you would
purchase a domain name called andywilliams.com, which is of
course already owned by the famous singer. This has some unique
advantages over using an ISP given domain name or a webmail
service such as Hotmail or Gmail. It also has some minor
disadvantages. Let's examine these.
One major advantage is that you control the entire email
address. You could create emails addresses like andy@andywilliams.com,
info@andywilliams.com, sales@andywilliams.com and so on. This is
in stark contract to an ISP assigned name like andywilliams@comcast.net.
If you wanted another one, you'd have to open up another account
or pay extra for each additional ISP assigned address. If you
ever decided to switch ISP's, you would lose that email address
and have to start over using a new one, and inform everyone you
communicated with about it - a very messy proposition.
Many get around this problem by getting a Hotmail, Yahoo Mail or
Gmail account which you can access from anywhere as long as you
have internet access. These types of email accounts definitely
have a place in your email toolchest, but do not suffice as your
primary personal email address. One reason is that you do not
have access to your email messages and address books when you
are not online, like during a long flight. Anotehr drawback is
that they do not allow you to export the online address books
making portability very tedious.
I prefer owning my own domain name which I call my permanent
email address. I will always have this email address as long as
I renew this domain name every year. The cost of registering a
domain name varies from $4 to $8 per year for most common ones.
This is a small price to pay for the advantages it brings you.
The one minor disadvantage of owning your own domain name is
that you need to manage it yourself, or have someone do it for
you. This in my opinion is far outweighed by the advantages
mentioned above.
Step #2: Create Private Email Adresses
A private email address is one that nobody but your inner circle
knows about. Every person that you give your personal email
address to is someone that you trust and want to receive email
from.
Setup one private email address for every person who is going to
need to receive messages. This could be you and 5 other members
of your family or 12 employees that work for you. This part is
quite straightforward, you simply login to your email control
panel and create new accounts for each email address that is
going to be used to receive email.
Step #3: Create Public Email Addresses As Aliases
A public email address is generally known to the public. It can
be specific like andyw@andywilliams.com or generic like
receptionist@andywilliams.com.
A public email address is created as an email alias. An email
alias is not a real email address, but an address that gets
redirected to a real email address. For example, you setup
receptionist@andywilliams.com as an alias that redirects to mary@andywilliams.com.
Whenever some sends an email to receptionist@andywilliams.com,
it will end up in Mary's inbox. If you change receptionists, you
simple modify the redirect for a very elegant solution. You can
then publish this public email address on a website, in a
brochure, on print advertising, business cards etc. without
giving away your personal email address and without having to
make much changes if Mary leaves and a new receptionist is
hired. This is a huge benefit and maintains your privacy as well
as those of others you have created email adresses for.
How does this help with spam, you ask? By using email aliases in
a smart fashion, you could very easily shut down any spam that
starts coming in. Let's examine how this can be done.
Step #4: Setup the Default or Catch-all Email Address
Your email control panel will have something called a "default
address" or it is also sometimes called a "catch-all address".
This is a valid email address that all unresolved emails go to.
If you set this up to be your personal email address for
example, then you will receive all emails that are addressed to
"anything"@andywilliams.com, this includes sales@andywilliams.com,
joe@andywilliams.com, andrew@andywilliams.com etc. Herein lies
the secret to combat spam.
Step #5: Create Specific Named Public Email Addresses As And
When Required
When you are forced to register on a website where you want to
get some information from, you are usually asked for a valid
email address. Well guess what, you now have an unlimited supply
of valid email adresses. I usually use a specific format when
registering at websites - it is "websitename"@andywilliams.com.
So if I am registering at a website called
www.get-rich-quick.com, I would use the address get-rich-quick@andywilliams.com
as my valid email address. When the site sends me an email, it
gets redirected to my personal email or whatever the default or
catch-all address is.
Step #6: Send Spam Back To Where It Came From, If Possible
Here comes the real bonus, if you subsequently start receiving
spam addressed to none other than get-rich-quick@andywilliams.com,
you simple create an email alias for get-rich-quick@andywilliams.com
and redirect the email back to exactly where it came from, for
example georg-bush@get-rick-quick.com. You will then never get
another email from anyone using that email address ever again.
This is cool and is my favourite part. Bear in mind that
spammers usually send email from an address that is not their
own, so if you see an address like noreply@get-rick-quick.com,
then you would redirect it somewhere else, for example a Hotmail
address that you setup just for redirection purposes. Please
exercise some discretion here because spammers often use the
email addresses of real people and we don't want these innocent
people getting redirected email.
Step #7: Be Diligent In The Ongoing Management Of Your Domain
If you do this diligently for each website where you register by
identifying the website name, you will very quickly know which
websites are selling email addresses and which ones honor their
promise not to share your information. ALl this while, nobody by
your personal inner circle knows your private email address.
A real-life example in my case: I use a specific email alias for
my Paypal account which nobody but Paypal knows. I have never
ever received spam on this address, but I have received hundreds
of spam messages on other email aliases that I have created. All
of these emails supposedly come from Paypal and address me as
"Dear Valued Paypal Member" or something similar, warning me
that my account is going to be closed or suspended unless I
click on their link and update my credit card information.
I hope that I have given you some food for thought on how to
manage the ever growing spam problem by protecting yourself by
taking some initiative and getting your own domain name. The
added benefit is that you now have a permanent email address no
matter where you choose to live or which ISP you use to connect
to the internet.
There are many other ways to fight spam which I will perhaps
address future articles.
About the author:
Balraj Dhaliwal is an Internet Consultant for BSD Register. He
helps customers with whatever they need to achieve their goals.
BSD Register is well respected and liked by its customers
because of its no nonsense simple approach to getting things
done. Visit BSD Register at
http://www.bsdregister.com/
