Personally, I have never, ever sent out any type of advertising email of any sort out of respect for others privacy. I figure if they want to find me and my sites, they can do that on search engines and directories or from the byline on the articles I write. But I have been plagued over the years by spam and spammers because of the past advertising I've placed on the web. That's a no brainer for everyone that has a presence on the web. There are quite a few ways to fight it, but oft times it seems like a loosing battle.
Spam method number one and it's cure:
Many of you have used auto submitters to advertise your site. Some of you probably made the mistake of using you main email address to submit it with. Some disreputable submission sites will harvest these emails and compile a list of suckers. Your email then is sold on that list to thousands of spammers. Big mistake.
If you have a website, most likely you have a way to create multiple email accounts. The best thing to do is to create a email address like submit@whateveryourdomainis.com and after a month of submitting your ads, delete that one and make a new one like submit2@whateveryourdomainis.com. Next month, repeat the process. So then you have actually created a problem for the ones spamming you. In order to stop all the bounce backs, they will have to edit their lists. It may not be a major task, but even if you cause the spammer a moments aggravation, you've succeeded.
Spam method number two and it's cure:
Spammers love message boards. Especially the guys who don't speak English. There seems to be a quintessential group of nationalities who just love to fill your message board with virility pills and pornography from Russia, Croatia, and Korea to name a few.
I personally have four message boards used for various reasons. One is for my online architectural drafting classes at http://101info.org/drafting/. I'll check the board daily and wouldn't you know it, a spammer has joined and filled the threads with images that would make some sailors blush.
The cure can come in several forms. The best but most inconvenient for me is to require their registration be approved by me before they can post. This however takes up quite a bit of time on my part. The second best is to keep an eye on your forums and when they register, ban their back sides. They usually are easy to spot because of the user names they use like Amequelet, PraigeZoori, or Detoxon. Banning on my SMF message board usually take a second or two and they have been stopped in their tracks because of IP blocking. After a while most spammer groups will give up on their efforts.
If your message board has a calendar, you might better set the permissions to admin only for posting to it. Spammers love calendars also. On my Christian fellowship board I found over 600 posts with URL and key words that were eating bandwidth like candy.
Spam method number three and it's cure:
Do you have an article directory? I have one called E-Articles R US. Spammers love this method too. But not in the submitting of articles. No, actually what they do is make multiple drafts of a particular article, stuff them with key words and url's, then leave them in draft form where they are actually picked up by search engines. Of my three article directories, my general directory was plagued by this. When I figured out what they were doing, there was over 5,000 drafts in my database. The solution I've found is to disable drafts on your directory.
Tim Davis is the webmaster for many various sites including House Plan Drafting 101 at http://houseplandrafting101.com where I teach students how to draw house plans over the internet.
Right now I'm trying an experiment that I hope will draw spammers away from my sites. It is a message board devoted to spammers and the junk they want to post at http://101info.org/spam/
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