Can the Email Spam
It seems you can’t have an email address for 1 day before you start getting spam. Some spam is harmless, (like getting your university degree from an unaccredited school), but when you start getting the vile stuff, it’s time to do something drastic.
There are two options I recommend for dealing with email spam. However, before we start treating the symptoms, here are a couple steps to cut down on the problem:
Never post your email address on a website. Spammers have scripts that harvest email addresses from the web. There’s an exception if your email is encoded, but this is something your web developer needs to do (I use Enkoder).
Consider using a free email account at Yahoo! or Google for online purchases. If a vendor starts spamming you, you can get a new account.
Even with these precautions, you’ll still get spam. It is my belief that if someone you send email to gets a computer virus, their address book will be used for spam and other viruses. So now for the spam-killing options:
First is using a spam filter. You can download or buy software that will filter your email on your computer, allowing you to manage how and what it filters. This is the preferred kind of filter, because you have complete control over it.
The other kind of filter is a service that filters your email before you receive it on your computer. We sell a service that does this. I use both the service and software, and now I only see a spam email once or twice a week.
The second option is an approved-sender whitelist. This is something that your ISP or website host has to offer. Earthlink is one ISP that does. With this service, no one can send you email unless they are on your approved-senders list. You can add folks to this list, and for those who are not on the list, they are “challenged.”
The challenge allows them to be approved if they perform some task that only a human being can do, such as clicking on a website and entering a code displayed there.
If they don’t respond to the challenge in a couple weeks — and spammers won’t — their email is discarded.
This approved-sender method is an aggressive solution to canning the spam, and should only be used as a last resort.