Spam, defined as “Unsolicted mass email,” is on the rise and it is directly impacting how tech savvy Realtors do business. The old days of "just delete it" or expecting a spam filter to be flawless are gone. Now spam gets routed to cell phones interrupting business and the spam filters frequently contain real clients, or they block legitimate emails from getting through. Spam lowers profits and wastes a sizable amount of time.
Some think that there is nothing that can be done to stop it. They are right. But there are some new techniques that you can use to drastically reduce your incoming spam going forward.
The first step is figuring out where your spam comes from, then you can figure out how to reduce it.Most of spam comes from the cultivation of email addresses by “spam spiders” that will troll the Internet looking for the @ sign. They then take those emails and sell them off to spammers.
Where are spammers getting your email address?
- Google it! First try googling your own email address. If it is out there even once, you might consider starting over with a new email address. If you have your own domain name, it should be free to set up a new forwarding account. Instead of lastname@YourFancyDomain.com maybe you would start over with homes@ or Firstname@. The old email would be phased out over the next year and ultimately deleted or set up with an autoreply saying how to contact you (don't put an email address in that autoreply)
- Your website! Many websites publish the owner's email address in the format: you@YourFancyDomain.com That address can easily be picked up by the spiders and resold. What you need to do is use a web-based contact form that will shelter your email address. Be aware that some forms expose your email in the code, and the spiders can just as easily get that address. Look under “View” and “Source” in your web browser to see if you find the @ symbol in the underlying code.
- A partner's website. If the website (like Homesdatabase.com) requires a published email address, another solution is to create an email that is just published on that website (not on business cards) and only lasts 6 months. Such as Homesearch@YourFancyDomain.com. Proceed to have that email address forward to your main address. Once you start getting spam on that email address, you can delete it and create a new one. The spam to that address will no longer get through and the likelihood that somebody still has that email written manually down on paper is minimal. Meanwhile your main email address remains clean.
- Your MLS system! Many systems such as the MRIS give access to the entire MLS database including email addresses to “partners.” While they don't directly sell email addresses, they do receive payment for supplying all the data including email addresses. The partners are supposed to be self regulated and use the data according to MRIS's terms of use. If you have created an email such as YournameFromMRIS@...com you can be fairly certain that any spam to that address was leaked from MRIS and possibly resold to other spammers. All you need is for one partner to resell the email portion to a spammer and your email will get spammed. I change my MRIS email address every 6 months and I kill off the old address. I have reported many incidents where I was able to trace the spam back to MRIS.
- Your association! Your local Realtor association probably has a great privacy policy stating that they don't sell your email address when you turn it in upon registration. Problem is that that data is not sold, but given for free to VAR and NAR. At that point it is released to the public via the website when searching for Realtors. They also end up in the hands of resellers and thus result in Realtor related “targeted” spam. You can curb your spam by giving them an address that you can change every 6 months such as Assoc@YourFancyDomain.com
With mutliple free forwarding accounts you can start to see exactly how and where your email address is being redistributed and shut down that avenue of spam. When I get emails to FrankEmailedFromMLS@.....com I know how the email got out. Also never “Opt out” from a spammer that you never opted in for, as it oftentimes just confirms your email address and places a higher value on your email since it is not “confirmed.”
Realtor to Realtor spam. Help stop it!
While emailing is so easy and cheap, we as Realtors still need to be aware of not spamming other Realtors. Even though we are all in the same business, an email to all 10,000 NVAR Realtors about your listing in West Virginia, or a $50k piece of land in Alexandria, is still spam. Just think of it this way, if every Realtor sent out an email to every Realtor each time they had a listing, our email system would be completely unusable. This is why the MLS was created, so we can search for what we want and not have it jammed down our throat with Open House spam. So be respectful and limit emails to maybe 5 highly targeted Realtors that you think really might want your information. A mass email to over 5 in my book is spam.
Quick steps to a clean 2007 and onward:
- Consider starting over with a new main email address with the goal of keeping it near-spam-free. This email address would never get used on the web. This includes when you are buying online, on your website, partner websites etc.. You can still get emails from your old address for another year or two, but start phasing it out.
Set up 2 or 3 temporary email addresses that forward to your new main account. Use these online until the spam starts rolling in. At that point, shut it off and create a new account or set up an autoreply that says that the email address has been phased out due to spam and to call you or go to your web-form to contact you.
Use a graphic as your email address. If you still want to publish your email address on your website consider converting it to a graphic. Instead of text that a spider can see, make your email address a graphic. You can do this by taking a screen shot of your website, pull that into a photo software and crop around your email address. Save it as a GIF and you will have your email address as a spam resistant graphic. Spiders can not see a graphic (as long as you don't make the graphic a link to an email address, which would defeat the purpose). A spammer would have to personally see your email address and add it manually to a spam list, which isn't as likely as a spider cultivating text.
Complain to those distributing your email address. (email me if you want names) Many organizations such as MRIS do not make fighting spam a top priority because not enough people have expressed that this is a problem. My theory is that members that are getting spamed don't know how the spammers were getting their address, so how can they complain to the right place? However, if you change your email to IGotSpammedViaXYZ@YOurDOmain.com they won't be able to deny that they were the leak.
- Request that NVAR's Board addresses Realtor to Realtor spam. Have them create a
policy and make that known to the members that spam is not acceptable. Define
it, vote on it. "Spam is X number of unsolicited emails" Is that number 2,
5, 10, 100? I don't know. I should be able to write to ONE person that I
admire and say "would you like to work with me" but an entire office? Or “hey you are the Alexandria king, I am about to list a place...”, but not to ever agent that has every listed a place in the 5 mile radius.
Frank Borges LL0SA- Broker in Virginia
Blog.FranklyRealty.com
YouTube.FranklyRealty.com
PS. For those of your new to spam, here are a couple more common techniques readdressed:
- I use a spam filter software called Spambayes for Outlook. There are many other versions, but this one takes results from millions of customers to decide what is spam. It is NOWHERE NEAR foolproof, but it routes your spam to a folder for you to check once a day vs every 15 minutes in your inbox. Some things do slip past the filter.
Never reply to a spammer to get "removed", nor click on the opt out button.
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If you have one particularly bad spammer, look to see if you can lock entire domains with your internet hosting account. Like block LL@SomeBadDomain.com
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