How To Protect Your Email Address
Junk email is fast becoming the scourge of the Internet. I understand that if there was no junk email the Internet would run as much as 50% faster ! So, when browsing the Internet and your email address is requested for any reason, be wary – particularly if there is nothing stating how the information will be used. A web site should at least state that your address will not be provided to any third party.
The junk email industry seeks valid email addresses from wherever it can – and often approaches web sites seeking to buy addresses that have been collected for subscriptions. Also, some unscrupulous web sites are primarily set up to collect email addresses. As well, there is software that can ‘trawl’ web sites on servers and ‘harvest’ the email addresses on pages.
So, be reticent when it comes to revealing your primary email address (i.e. the one associated with your I.S.P.). When I first started using the Internet back in mid-1990’s I was too free with disclosing my original email address and in the end, 90% of my email to that account was junk !
If you are receiving junk email you may have noticed some have an ‘unsubscribe’ email address or web site URL to make them appear more responsible. In nearly all cases this will not remove you from their address list, but will confirm the validity of your email address. If you act on this, you will soon experience an explosion in junk email as your address will be circulated as a confirmed valid address.
So, if you are receiving unwanted emails in your primary email address, what can you do ?
Changing your I.S.P. is a drastic solution and requires notifying everyone of the changed address.
Then, how do you deal with the situation ?
There are several options, ranging from filtering your email through to ‘bouncing’ unwanted email back to the sender.
Filtering Your Email.
With all email software, you can dump spam directly into the Deleted Items folder. Presuming you are using Microsoft Outlook Express as your email software, this is how you do it …
First you need to check which version of Outlook Express you use – there are some minor differences. To do this click on the Help menu and choose ‘About Microsoft Outlook Express’. You will see the version number near the top of the About message box.
If you have version 4 choose Inbox Assistant from the Tools menu. In the Inbox Assistant dialogue box click on the Add button. You are presented with the Properties dialogue box giving you a number of options to filter messages.
You can type a particular email address in the From field. Or, you can enter a word or phrase in the Subject field – e.g. make money fast. Then check Delete off server and finally click OK. You can create any number of ‘rules’ to cater for many possibilities.
In version 5 in the Tools menu choose Message Rules and then from the fly-out menu choose Mail. In the New Mail Rule dialogue box check an appropriate choice in panel 1 (Check the conditions for your rule). Here you may choose ‘Where the From line contains people’. In panel 2 choose ‘Delete it from server’. In panel 3 you will see blue underlined text (like a link) ‘contains people’ – click on this. You will then be presented with the Select People dialogue box. Type in the offender’s email address in the top field and click on add, then click on OK.
However, there is a problem with this as the junk email merchants change their sender address with almost every piece of junk email. In addition, be careful with the wording you put in the Subject field. Remember computers essentially are just machines and they don’t discern the context of words/phrases. So, for example, if you were to put the word ‘sale’ here hoping to dump uninvited emails regarding sales offers then valid emails from clients that may be important to your business may also be dumped.
Deleting Junk Email on Your I.S.P. System.
For the ultimate solution, there is software that allows you to preview the headers (sender, subject and if a file is attached) of emails waiting for you on your ISPs server before you download them to your computer. You can then choose whether to send a fake bounce of the email back to the sender, giving them the impression that the email address was invalid – or just delete the email. The remaining emails can be downloaded with your email software in the normal way. The software is freeware and is called MailWasher. For details, go to:
http://www.mailwasher.net/
How to Complain.
If you wish to complain, you do so to the I.S.P. from which the email emanates. Even if a domain name is used, you can see who is their I.S.P. You can establish this in Outlook Express by opening the headers for the email by choosing Properties from the File menu and in the Properties message box selecting the Details tab. Select (highlight) all of this information in the normal way and copy it to clipboard (Ctrl-C) and Paste this information into the message to be Forwarded – at the top is best. Having obtained this, simply Forward that email (with the full headers as described) to the Postmaster at the sender’s I.S.P. – for example postmaster@theirISP.com.au When you complain, bear in mind that the I.S.P. is not involved in the spam, so don’t abuse them. It’s a case of their system being used in that way by one of their customers. Generally the I.S.P. will immediately terminate the offender’s account.
Subscribing to Newsletters.
The best approach if you wish to subscribe to a newsletter and/or register for some information, is to use a special email address. Many I.S.P. accounts allow for the creation of secondary email addresses. Create one for your newsletter subscriptions. Additional addresses can also be created for other purposes. If you have your own domain, the same approach applies. (Microsoft Outlook Express allows for the use of multiple email accounts) If at any time this email address starts to attract junk email, simply cancel (often called deactivate) that email address and create a new one. You will then, of course, need to re-subscribe to all your newsletters.
The Best Option ?
It does depend on your situation – but, as in medicine, prevention is better than cure. For prevention, adopt the use of secondary email addresses for newsletter subscriptions, etc.
If, however, your primary email address is being deluged by junk email and you don’t wish to change that address then the best option probably is to use MailWasher.
So, you don’t have to drown in unwanted email. Implementing one or more of these strategies can give you control over what email arrives in your InBox.
David Berghouse author of BizNet: a Workbook coveringthe Internet and eCommerce for home based and small businesses … putting the puzzle together
http://www.microbiz.com.au
david.berghouse@microbiz.com.au
