by Ben May

In a world of email communication, the email is becoming the sole point of contact for many businesses and individuals. The email has the advantage over the phone call, or instant message that it can be delivered and read at the earliest convenience. The email has the advantage over something like a posted letter in that the response can be immediate, and no delays in transporting the message, especially inter-state or internationally.

When we now fire up our workstations every morning, and make our cup of tea, whilst the computer is downloading all the emails received over night, or since the last check. Whilst pulling down the large number of emails, you’ll see a number of emails from family members, fellow workers, and unknown contacts. Among the unknown contacts there will undoubtedly be emails trying to sell Viagra, offshore drugs and other pieces of junk email, better known as spam.

How does it happen and what does it do? Spam is sent to any email address the spammer has in their database. Trying to sell something, trying to direct the recipient to a virus based website, trying to gain traffic to a new website, or to simply be a nuisance, regardless of the reason, spam annoys the best of us.

How does the spammer get my email address? There are multiple ways a spammer can get your email address. If you have your email address posted online, then you’re almost guaranteed that they will get your address. Spammers can also get your email address from buying your details from other people such as other websites that may collect your email address however this is rare; as most people caught doing this, are shut down.

How does one avoid spam? There are a number of theories of how to avoid spam. The best, simple ways to do this, are to avoid putting your email online. If you must, there are certain scripts available to prevent this or to say yourname [at] yoursite.com.au most people will understand that means yourname@yoursite.com.au. But it can be tricky. Further, you should always have a more difficult email address, a spam bot can guess simple email addresses, such as bob@bob.com, or sales@mysite.com.au, info@mysite.com.au as they are commonly used on most sites. The other way to help reduce spam, is to have two email addresses: one that you use online- this will receive more spam. You should then have a secondary email address where only your verified contacts know about, this will always be good email.

Is there anything else that I can do? Yes there is! Where your email comes from, either your Internet Provider, or Website Host (if you have a website) will be able to run spam filtering software, that will be able to scan your email, to see if it looks like spam. The spam filtering algorithm is fairly complex, but in most cases is accurate. If you’re getting the spam blues, talk to your email provider about some spam filtering! Or switch your web hosting over to Design House  we’re more than happy to help you with the spam blues! Click here to see the Design House Premium Australian Web Hosting

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