Just about everyone who owns a computer these days has an email address and uses email to communicate with others. Probably the most astonishing thing about this reality is that the vast majority of email users routinely cause themselves immeasurable grief by using their email carelessly. Not only setting themselves up to be bombarded with spam but quite often subjecting those they have had email dialogue with to the same types of problems. Following are a few suggestions that are ridiculously easy to implement and will go a long way towards preventing spam and other email related issues.
#1. BCC: Email software comes equipped with the dreaded "Batch Carbon Copy" function or BCC, which allows the user to send email to multiple recipients at the same time. BCC should only be used internally, such as within a company or in a scenario where an association amongst all of the recipients is already established. Think of it this way; you are distributing the email addresses of everyone on the BCC list to everyone else on the BCC list. Are you certain that everyone on the list is comfortable with this arrangement? Can you vouch for everyone on the list and are you confident that none of these people will abuse the email addresses you have sent them? . . . Over the years I have had this issue come up a number of times and surprisingly, there have been occassions where the guilty party has become defensive over this major faux pas. We can assume the defensive position with all of its hostility is adopted because they do not fully understand the possible ramifications of what they have done. I find that the following question quite often drives the point home:
"Who gave you permission to distribute my email address to a bunch of people that I do not know?" . . . my point is; be firm, make it known to your associates that you want your email address treated with some respect.
If you must contact a group of people who have no prior association, simultaneously via email, look into bulk emailing software . . . such as this one:
HERE #2. The "mailto" command in HTML code: <a href="mailto: . . should be a thing of the past! Still to this day you will see people using it simply because they do not know any better. What this command does is create a link on a website which when clicked upon will activate the site visitors default email program opening a send to page. Further additions to the code enable a pre-filled subject line and body text. Try the following example:
Send me an email . . . (it is not an actual email address) . . . Why it is a terrible way to facilitate email contact via a website should be obvious. The email address is contained right in the code, exposed to anyone or worse; to any email harvesting software. The symbol @ is the trigger for email harvesting software (amongst other triggers) . . . there is only one reason that email addresses are harvested in this fashion, that is to send unsolicited spam.
Summary: The two previous examples are illustrative of how two different groups commonly cause themselves problems through the careless use of email but the conclusion is the same. With both the average user or the person setting up email contact through a website, it can be said that if the email address is exposed to parties unknown, it will almost surely be abused. Caution and a little common sense must be used concerning the use of email. Treat your email address and the email addresses of people you have had contact with via email as guarded secrets. Never expose email addresses to situations where they can be auto-harvested. Also be extremely careful about responding to emails that find their way into your email inbox if you do not recognize the sender. Never, ever post an email address in a public forum or as a comment on a blog.
There are a number of things that can be done as simple precautions, both for the common user and for the person attempting to initiate or provide a means of email contact through a website. It is at this point we will split this thread into the two previously mentioned groups (the reply to this post deals more with website use of email - scroll down the page) . . . but before doing so, following is a little trick that anyone can use.
If you must post an email address on a website, in a public forum or in a blog comment, at least make it for human eyes only. It is a well known fact that search engine spiders can only read the information provided for an image (i.e. the alt= tag) and not see the image itself. The same is true for email harvesting software, with both using bots of some type, all are blind to an image. If you must post an email address in public domain, why not use an image with instructions for humans that they must type what they are reading into their email program's send to field? . . . . an example below.
You must manually type the following email address
(Example - Not a real email address)
Does this sound like too much trouble? How difficult would it be to create a simple image and keep it handy to use in this manner? . . . . the answer is easy; it's a lot easier and involves far less time than cleaning up an email address that has been trashed by spamming idiots.
Resist the temptation to obfuscate an email address posted online, such as the following example:
email"AT"yoursite"DOT"com (with instructions to edit the words AT and DOT back to the respective symbols @ and .) . . these are again common email harvesting software triggers.
Learn to use the filters inherent in your respective email software and it's not a bad idea to have a "throwaway" email address for answering those emails you are not too sure about.
