Fight Spam and the spammers !

Many of us experience a nightmare every time we turn on our computer and download our Email. How many times have you been submerged by tens if not hundreds of unsolicited promotional Email messages or to put it more simply junk mail ?

I reached a point where I couldn't take it any more: repetitive worthless junk mail cluttering my mail box, I had to find a way to fight back and protect my Email from spam, and the only way I could think about was to keep my Email a secret. So I needed a fresh start, a brand new Email that I notified to friends, business partners and Clients. What a job that was !!

All this effort triggered a mental process geared towards answering a question: how can I keep this from happening again ?? Well now I know better than to click on links from spam - if only I knew back then ...

But there is another way "they" get your Email, and that's via your web site. There are numerous email harvesting software tools out there and they want your Email to feed into the spamming machine - is there a way to protect ourselves ?? This thought became an obsession and I asked my fellow programmers for information on Email harvesting software and how it works, then went back to look at the HTML that enables our web site users to reach out and contact us (after all we are on the web to be seen and for our web site users to make themselves heard ...)

I went back to the basics and found everything there was to know about the MAILTO TAG - and found out some pretty interesting things on how to fight the spammers and keep them out of my mailbox, let's walk thru the process together and find out how this can be useful to you and your web site.

When setting up a web page we'll include important information like our address, telephone number, and EMAIL. We all make that Email address a link via the ANCHOR TAG and MAILTO Attributes and that is where the Email harvesting programs find our Email address: that explains why after as little as a few days, once a brand new web site has gone up you start receiving SPAM.

Normally our HTML editor will set up HTML code to send an Email from our web pages that looks like this:

<a href="mailto:yourname@domain.com">send Email</a>

If you paste this HTML code in a web page, a click of the user will open a new window that looks like this:

OK, now try this line of code in your web page:
<a href="mailto:yourname@domain.com?SUBJECT=Requesting further information from your web site page xyz.html">send more information</a>

This time the message window will look like this:

You see this time both Email and subject line have been automatically written, saving the user time and giving us the opportunity to identify exactly where the request is coming from (so we know which of our web pages is generating the most traffic)

Now another step forward: Let's take the previous line of HTML MAILTO code and introduce a few more changes, I'll show you how to AVOID exposing your Email now:

<a href="mailto:?subject=Requesting information from page xyz.html&body=***PLEASE NOTE*** help us fight spamming ! please remove the Xs and blank spaces from the following Email and use it to contact us - nXamXe AT doXmaiXnDOTcXom - Thank you for your time. PLACE YOUR REQUEST HEREAFTER">click here</a>

This time we included the subject of the Email with a note (max. length is 255 characters) where we explain to the user how to identify our Email and put it in the TO section of our message window. If you copy and paste this code in a web page you'll see how the cursor places itself in the TO dialog box ready for the user to type in our Email address. This HTML code will "hide" our Email address from the Email harvesting software and by doing so protect us from spam (at least for now ...)

It's up to you to decide whether this technique will be effective or not: you might scare off your users if they are not experienced internauts, thus loosing a contact. It's a trade off, keep spam out of your Email account or make life a bit more complicated for the user (but it's not all that difficult after all is it ??)

If you have any suggestions on how you would modify the text please do send them to me and I'll gladly update this page.