If you have any kind of an online presence, you most likely get spam email. Spending any more time on it than you have to wastes precious time and money. Spam is frustrating and costly in and of itself, but rather than spend any time chasing down spammers or turning them in, minimize your frustration and wasted time by reducing incoming spam and installing a good spam filter to deal with what does get through.

Here are three tips for efficiently and effectively dealing with spam.

1. Make sure you do not have a “catch-all” email account on your email server. A catch-all address is one that receives all email sent to your domain whether or not it’s addressed to a set mailbox.
2. Don’t publish your email address on your website (or anyone else’s), either in text form or in the HTML. Of course, if you’re in business, you need to make yourself available to you customers, but there are many ways to make your email address available to humans and not spambots. To hide your email address from the spambots you can display it as an image rather than text or disguise it with JavaScript. Alternatively, use a contact form instead of providing an email address. (Be sure the contact form you use doesn’t include your email address in the HTML.) You can use a free form generator like Master Feedback or for more complex needs and more protection, we recommend MasterForm V4.
3. Use a good spam filter for your incoming email. We use and recommend MailWasherPro because it works while still giving me complete control over my email.

As long as it’s inexpensive and effective, spammers will continue to spam. Don’t give them any more time than you have to.

For more tips on preventing spam and to learn more about protecting your website from other vulnerabilities, read my interview Will Bontrager, an expert CGI programmer and author of some of my favorite scripts.

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