Is it Spam or is it Spam?

What is Spam?

Spam is the email equivalent of Junk Mail. It is commonly defined any unsolicited email from any online entity in which the recipient has no previous or present business dealings. There are generally three types of so-called ‘spam’ commonly experienced.

Benign – Advertisements for legitimate products from legitimate businesses with usually mild and infrequent occurrences.

Aggressive – This method is similar to benign; however, employs much more aggressive tactics. I qualify ‘aggressive’ as those who send more than one email per week.

Fraudulent – Illegal email, whether aggressive or only one time, fraud is fraud. If a person knowingly provides false information in an attempt to gain something from another, that is fraud.

Notwithstanding the prevalent fraud and abuse, I will be focusing on legitimate email solicitation vs. real spam for the purposes of this discussion and follow up with some helpful tips.

The Real difference

Here are some examples:

1. I’m a small business owner who sells ‘Whoopties’ online. I come across your website and find out you sell ‘Flava-Rockets’ which are made from Whoopties. Therefore, I proceed to send you an email in which I solicit you for business.  Keep in mind I found your contact information on your website. Is that spam?

2. Another instance is that I am a website owner looking to increase link popularity. For that reason, I search out related businesses and email them asking to exchange links. I found the email addresses on the recipient’s website. Is that spam?

3. One step further, I need to mass mail 500 website owners about my great online service that they all need. Hence, I employ a web crawler to gather up as many emails as I can, related to the subject matter I am targeting. I gather all those emails from published websites. Is that spam?

Some might say that all these are forms of spam; others may say that only number three is spam; I say none of them is an example of spam. Here’s why: in all of the given examples, the recipient’s email address was published on a website.  Some may disagree, but it is this writer’s opinion that if you choose to publish your email address on a website, blog, or any other type of voluntary publication you are in effect saying to the world, “Hello world, this is my email, please contact me.”

If you do have a website, or if you published your email address in a forum or on somebody’s blog, do not be surprised if you start to receive many email solicitations. If you are a website owner and you publish your contact email, it is not a mystery as to why other webmasters are emailing you for links.

Real ‘spam’ occurs when you do not publish your email anywhere yet somehow your email is on a list where less desirable people are sending you unwanted junk. How does this happen? Usually it happens one or both of two ways: either you submitted contact information on a website for what you thought was legitimate purposes, or someone else turned over your email to a spammer. If you do not own a website, and you have not posted your email address on someone else’s website, yet you are receiving all kinds of weird offers from unknown sources, you are a victim of real spam.

How to Avoid Real or not so Real Spam

If you are a website owner and do not want to receive unsolicited email, here are some definite steps to take that will avoid spammers 99% of the time.

1. Do not publish your email address at all – Sounds simple, but people think that in order to run a legitimate business, they must publish an email address on their site. This is wrong. A better way to provide a contact method is via use of a secure contact form. Not just any contact form, but one with security features built in to prevent abuse. This provides a way for your potential clients or other businesses to contact you without you having to publishing your email. The security prevents spammers from finding out your email, or using the contact form to harass or abuse your site. Illegitimate spammers do not waste time trying to break into a secure form when there are easier targets ‘next-door’. Always provide a phone number to contact you for those who prefer to talk on the phone and also as back up incase the contact form malfunctions.
2. If you feel you must publish your email address take the following steps to protect it from being picked up by web-crawlers:
1. Use java-script to obfuscate the email address (for the uninitiated, obfuscate means to obscure or to encrypt).  This is done at two levels: 1. It makes it impossible for web crawlers to accurately harvest the email address. 2. It prevents the mouse-over action from revealing the address. For an expample, click here.
2. Use a hyperlink with text such as “Click here” instead of the actual email address.
3. Use a gateway email address which automatically forwards to your real email address. Ex. 'conact@yourwebsite.com' is securely published, but a forwarder is set up at the host to send the email to 'you@yourwebsite.com' . In the event that somehow your email does get onto a spam list, you can easily change the gateway address and kill the old one without having to notify anyone of the change.
4. Never use a common email alias, but rather create a difficult one to guess. For example, better to use “con—tact1@yourwebsite.com” than “contact@yourwebsite.com” . Why? – because common aliases such as ‘contact’, ‘webmaster’, ‘info’, etc. are easy to guess. Spammers will find your domain easy enough while you just make it easier to find your email address using the common titles.  The spammers can just guess at the contact info. Be creative and come up with un-guessable aliases.
5. Hire a professional to do all of this correctly. Do it yourself for your business can often lead to big mistakes. Core Web Solutions can help you secure your contact methods. To find out how, click here
3. If you are NOT a website owner avoid submitting your email to any website that you are not sure of. Whenever you submit contact information to a website, there is always a risk that that site owner may distribute the contact info to other businesses. Avoid doing this unless necessary, such as purchasing products online. I would say that you should look for a privacy policy which stresses that the website does not distribute email addresses. However, illegitimate spammers are all liars anyway, so you cannot trust such statements. Its like having a promise not to 'rip you off'. What purpose does that serve?
4. Create several email addresses for different purposes. For example, you should have one email address that you use for personal contact with family and friends. You should have a separate email for online business transactions. Never use the personal email address when submitting contact info and you will have a very low risk of being spammed. Use the second ‘transaction’ email that you created for submitting contact info when necessary. If you begin to be spammed, you can easily dispose of that email and create a new one without having to notify everyone you know.

Remember if you have your email address published online, you will begin to receive email solicitations from online businesses. This is not necessarily spam; it's normal business. If you want to avoid this, you must take steps to protect yourself. The same is true for private users. If you want to avoid so-called spam, you must take steps to protect yourself.

Website owners: Need to set up secure contact methods? Contact Core Web Solutions today!

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