By Gary Cope
President

If you have e-mail, chances are pretty good that you have received some type of spam (unsolicited and often malicious e-mail). So, how did your e-mail end up on a spammers list? There are several ways spammers can get your e-mail address and one of the most common methods is the use of “harvesting bots” that crawl (or spider) Web pages looking for e-mail address in the coding. When a harvesting bot finds an e-mail, it records it and reports back to the spammers so they can add it to the list of e-mails. Spammers also use a “directory harvest attack,” in which spammers essentially guess the valid e-mail addresses at a given domain by trying common usersnames ( i.e. john@yourcompany.com).So, how do we minimize the risk of having our e-mail address(es) spammed? Well, obviously it doesn’t make sense to remove your e-mail address from your Web site because you must allow your visitors to contact you. Below are some options that will allow your customers and visitors to contact you while at the same time reducing the odds of getting spammed.

1) Use a Form - This is a viable option, but you also run the risk of scaring some people off depending on how much information you ask of them.

2) Spell It Out - Spell out your e-mail address like this: gary AT cwimedia DOT com. You may have seen this on some Web sites and its use is gaining popularity. However, it requires more work on the part of your visitor, so use it cautiously.

3) Unicode - Replace the letters of your e-mail address with Unicode equivalents. Each letter of the alphabet has a Unicode equivalent that every Web browser can translate, but not necessarily the harvesting bots.

4) Javascript - By adding some simple javascript to your site, you can still allow people to click on an e-mail link without bots stealing your e-mail address.

If you have questions about how CWI Media & Marketing can help improve the security of your Web site, please call Gary at 540.522.1122.