Spam Proof Your Website
Email and Submission Forms
YES it is possible to end the daily flood
of spam! Keep reading to find out how.
Emails listed in the open. One place spammers
get your email address is right off your website. If you list the address
in the open it is there for the taking by the spammers' automated crawlers.
Go to your contact page and on the browser select
"View->Source". This is how spam crawlers see your web page
and if you look closely you can see your email address right in the open.
But you have to show your email; how can your
customers contact you if you don't?
The key is to encrypt it for the spam crawlers
and un-encrypt it for real people. This will make it invisible to all
automated spam crawlers. The only way someone can get your email address
is to visit your site in person. A good comparison to telephones is
having an unlisted number. Encrypting your email makes it "unlisted".
Submission Forms. Forms on your site that collect
information and then email it to you are now a target for spammers.
They know it is being emailed to you. They fill in the blanks with
spam content and submit - all automatically. The key to preventing
it is again to ensure it is a real person submitting the form. This
is accomplished just by asking a simple question and checking that
it is answered correctly.
The process to spam-proof your site:
- Abandon your old email. Yes it is a pain,
you have to notify all your contacts you have a new email but isn't
sorting through that daily spam more of a pain? Sure, give the spam
filters a try first. You'll find either they don't work or they work
too well and you start losing real customer emails. Then come back
here and give your site a thorough spam proofing.
- Load your new encrypted email on your site.
- Convert your submission forms to spam proof
forms.
- Never post your "unlisted" email
anywhere! Only give it to customers, friends and legitimate businesses.
The whole process depends on prevention. You don't give your phone
number to everyone who asks for it so why give your email?
The FAQS
Does it work? Yes! Every site
we have spam-proofed has not had a single spam.
Won't the spammers just visit my site
in person and get the email? No! Spammers are cheap, that's
why they spam in the first place; real advertising is too expensive.
Like-wise visiting every single website to get an email address is
simply too expensive.
Won't the spammers eventually get through? Maybe!
Spammers keep getting more sophisticated and we can't guarantee these
techniques will always work. However the more work you make the spammers
do, the slower they can collect emails, eventually making it non-cost
worthy.
Will the un-encryption work for every
web browser? It will work for all the most common newer
browsers. That's 99.99% of the people out there. Someone using a
very old browser is probably not going to be your customer anyway.
How much will it cost? The cost
depends on the size of your site. Small sites start at just $85. This
is less than the cost of most spam filters.
| Unprotected
Email |
Protected
Email |
| george@whitehouse.gov |
kisvkiD{lmxilsywi2ksz
Looks the same right?
But here is what the spam crawlers see: mailto:kisvkiD{lmxilsywi2ksz$" .
(in your browser select "View->Source"). Obviously any
email sent to that address will never bother you!
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