I Wish to Register a Complaint! SPAM & Junk Mail Griping

Last week, I was bombarded by 100's of SPAM messages disguised as "Returned Mail - Recipient Not Found". Every one of them had a SPAM advertisement for God knows what attached. This is one of those things that really ticks me off!!! How about you?

Like intelligent people are going to buy fake watches, penis pills, and dirt-cheap (but legal - I swear) software from a company that uses SPAM methods to reach us. Get a life SPAM-ers!

I have a few tips for those of you who don't like SPAM either:

1. Do not use a "catch-all" on your email server. A "catch-all" directs any email that does not have a valid email address on your server and sends it to the "catch-all" email address. Almost none of my hosting clients have "catch-all" settings, for those of you that are not hosted with me, you may consider contacting your hosting supplier.

2. Use a Junk Filter. Either on your web server, we offer SPAM Assassin on our server at no additional cost, or on your email program. Outlook gets updates for its Junk Filters every month or so.

3. Never, ever leave your email address "laying around". That is to say, do not list your email address on your website - you may consider have a link that reads "Email Us" with your email address as the link (mailto:joe@joesco.com). SPAMers have programs that read website looking for email addresses - they call this "harvesting".

Fight back against SPAM!!! I found an awesome bit of code on a website that hates SPAM too. You may have noticed the No SPAM graphic on our website (at the bottom left). When a "harvester" reads my site, the program reads that link and is taken to a page of nonsense email addresses. This adds tons of non-existent email addresses to their database, wasting their time (like they do ours) and junking up their email list. Can I get an Oh Yeah!!! Get your No SPAM code and fight back with me.

What are you doing to fight SPAM? Prevent junk email?