How to Stop Spam Mail

Part 1 of this article (www.isitebuild.com/organizedemail) discussed how to efficiently organize your email so you can spend more time on building a profitable business.

One of the most annoying aspects of dealing with incoming email is spam mail (unsolicited email). It fills up your email box, takes up your precious time, and seems to only get worse. You may even delete your personal or business email that was mistaken for spam mail.

This could result in lost business to you.

In Part 2 of this article you will discover solutions to help you stop spam mail. This allows you to spend more time building a profitable business.

Apart from just hitting the delete button each day here are some timesaving solutions:

1. Use the filters or the message rules of your email client.

a) In outlook express (since it is the most popular email client) go to tools - message rules - mail - mail rules - new

b) Under "select conditions for your rule", check "where the subject line contains specific words".

c) Under "select the actions for your rule" check "delete it".

d) Under "rule description" click on "contains specific words" - enter words or phrases that you never wish to receive again.

e) Under "name of rule" provide an appropriate name for the rule ie JUNK.

f) Click OK

Creating this JUNK rule will automatically delete emails containing the specific words or phrases you entered.

There are many other rules you can apply (ie move certain messages to specific folders automatically), depending on what you need.

Here are a couple of web sites that list phrases and keywords frequently used in spam mail:

http://www.sv-cs.com/spam.html http://www.wilsonweb.com/wmt8/spamfilter_phrases.htm

2. Use anti-spam software.

You can install software either on your computer (client side) or on your web host (server side).

a) Client Side - software that resides on your computer.

Mailwasher (www.mailwasher.net) - provides an easy way to check and manage your emails before you download them.

There are free and paid versions of mailwasher.

Spamkiller (http://www.mcafee.com/myapps/msk/default.asp)

Features:

*Block emails using both lists and preset filters *Update internal filters automatically *Filter MSN/Hotmail, POP3 and MAPI email *Create custom filters
*Quarantine spam mail outside of your inbox *Import "friends" automatically into your safe list *Monitor and filter multiple email accounts *Fight back against spammers

Paid version only.

b) Server Side - software that resides on your server. This means the spam mail will be deleted before it makes it to your inbox.

Ask your web host what spam mail software they carry and how to implement it. My web host uses spamassassin.

Spamassassin (www.spamassassin.org) this is a mail filter widely used by ISPs to identify spam mail before it reaches your inbox. Check with your web host if it is already installed.

The spam-identification tactics used include:

header analysis - identifies spammers using tricks to mask their identities in the email header.

text analysis - identifies characteristic styles used by spammers in the body of the email.

3) Get a free SpamCheck Report

Here is a FREE test you can do to make sure your newsletter gets through to your subscribers and is not stopped by spam software. Just send your newsletter to spamcheck-webselling83@sitesell.net and you'll get back a full SpamCheck Report in seconds.

Make sure TEST starts the subject line or it will be ignored.

Now your readers can stay out of the "Junk Mail Folder."

Use these techniques and tools to remove spam mail before it gets to you. You will gain more time and be able to concentrate more effectively on your business.

Herman Drost is the author of the NEW ebook "101 Highly Effective Strategies to Promote Your Web Site" a powerful guide for attracting 1000s of visitors to your web site. http://www.isitebuild.com/web-site-promotion Subscribe to his Marketing Tips newsletter for more original articles. mailto:subscribe@isitebuild.com. You can read more of his in-depth articles at: http://www.isitebuild.com/articles

Here Comes the SPAM...Irina

----------------------------------------------------------- TITLE: Here Comes the SPAM... AUTHOR: Irina
LENGTH: 703 words
FORMAT: 59 characters per line CONTACT: irbonness@ureach.com --------------------------CUT HERE-------------------------

Here Comes the SPAM...

By Irina

A courtesy copy of your publication (or, at least, an e-mail notification) sent to irbonness@ureach.com will be appreciated.

I exercise regularly and follow a healthy diet. My weight is right on the money. So every invitation "to loose 30 pounds in 20 days" insults more than just my intelligence and literary taste. Yet until now I managed to treat Unsolicited Commercial Email (UCE) or simply SPAM as a nuisance that wastes my time and resources, but does not represent a serious problem. Not any more!

The message that changed my attitude looked rather innocent:
"Hello [fname],
I am so-and-so. You are receiving this message because I saw your online business site..." The next day I got another similar message from different so-and-so. Soon, the number escalated to a dozen a day. Very disturbing was also the fact that the messages were arriving to my "strictly business" email addresses reserved exclusively for my customers and business partners. A little research quickly revealed the name of my new enemy - Spam Bot.

Spam Bot is much like a search engine spider. Twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week it crawls from page to page looking for email addresses. Even single Spam Bot is able to quickly produce huge list of addresses (only addresses - that's why they called me [fname]!) which are used to send SPAM. Unfortunately, there are many of them... Another problem is that being extremely easy to generate and thus very cheap, these lists are sold and re-sold over and over again to nave (obtuse?) "netrepreneurs".

Looks like a serious self-perpetuating problem for anyone with business email address posted on the Internet. Is there a solution? Well, yes - you can completely eliminate this type of SPAM by making your email address unrecognizable for Spam Bots. Here are several possible approaches:

1. Use the FORM MAIL whenever possible. This not only conceals your email address, but also makes it easier for real visitors to contact you. Here is a working example: http://www.megaone.com/hbb/savemoney/ Anyone can email me a question by typing it in the window right on my page and hitting the "Submit Query" button. Yet the address itself is hidden from my human visitors as well as Spam Bots.

2. Replace your "mailto:" link with an IMAGE of your email address. To see an example go to http://www.pcpages.com/trafficy/links.html Feel free to examine the HTML code of the page by right- clicking anywhere in the window and then scrolling to "View source" in the drop-down menu. Instead of my email address you (and Uncle Spam Bot as well!) will only see a link to "emaddress.gif". In this case additional security brings about some inconvenience - the address is not "clickable" and thus one has to memorize it or write it down. This slight disadvantage is circumvented in the next approach.

3. Replace several REAL characters in your email address with so-called SPECIAL characters. These special characters always begin with "&" and end with ";". Whatever is in between determines how the browser will interpret that particular special character. For example, typing "&" "#" "6" "4" ";" (without quotation marks and spaces) is equivalent to using the real character "@".

If you are skeptical that this replacement alone is enough to fool the Spam Bot (that, by the way, makes two of us) - proceed with replacing other characters in your email address. Here is your cheat-sheet to substitute all vowels: a=#97, e=#101, i=#105, o=#111 and u=#117. Remember to start every special character with "&" and end with ";". You can see how it works by going to http://www.megaone.com/hbb/savemoney/links.html

My human visitors can see and click on my email address by using "Click here to get my email address" link. When viewing the code of the little window, you will not find the address in an explicit form - just a long string of special characters with some letters in between. This (hopefully!) is enough to confuse Spam Bots visiting my site.

We will never be able to totally eliminate SPAM that seems to come with the cyberspace "territory". Yet I should feel just a little better if the above suggestions at least partially shield your inbox from unwelcome (and often very badly phrased) offers to consolidate the debts you don't have or safely enlarge a part of your body that... well, you do not have either.
Irina helps people save on healthcare and create steady stream of residual income working from home http://www.megaone.com/hbb/savemoney/ http://www.megaone.com/hbb/makemoney/

Irina helps people save on healthcare and create steady stream of residual income working from home http://www.megaone.com/hbb/savemoney/ http://www.megaone.com/hbb/makemoney/