layla | F***ing Spam

It's not often that I really feel like swearing, but "good grief" hardly seems to cover my spam situation anymore. Since the last time I checked my email today (about 6 hours) I got over 200 spam messages. That's ... absurd. The trouble is, I can't just categorically delete everything except the ones that get filtered to other folders (which is what happens with most of my "expected" mail from known email addresses) because I do get unsolicited mail of a business type: fan letters, orders and stuff. But I'm thisclose to putting a note wherever I give out my email address, such as on my website, asking people who write to me about Raven's Children and Kismet to use a certain header line (such as "Raven's Children" or "Kismet") and then just deleting anything that doesn't have the header. I know that I would probably miss a few important emails that way. But goddamn ... I'm tired of wasting my time sorting through hundreds of messages a day that are manipulative, pointless, intelligence-insulting and/or obscene. My time is more important to me than that.

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Hi Layla!

Randomly browsing and found you! :) Much hugs (am very flattered and bowled over by your previous post, thank you! :D). G'luck on the move!

I can relate to the spam issue. If you're using e-mail addys provided by your domain instead of a free one from Hotmail, here're a few suggestions that've helped me:

- Does your host provide SpamAssassin? It's a *very* big help in weeding out ratty stuff. Its website is at http://spamassassin.org, but I wouldn't recommend trying to make sense of that site unless you're familiar with UNIX and that kinda thing -- confuses the heck out of me! Basically my host just provides that function, and it's a big help.

- Feedback forms are marvelous to put on your website, that way you yourself can determine its subject title, what info the sender has to provide, etc. Spambots won't get your e-mail addy as easily (I'm inclined they can't get it at all, because if there isn't a "mailto:" preceeding the addy, then they can't grab it). You can either do a CGI form or a PHP form, whichever works best for you.

- If you must provide an actual e-mail address, either don't link it, or write it as "username@NOSPAMdomain.com" to foil spambots, while telling people to just remove the "NOSPAM" from the addy.

- Or, you can use this javascript below (replacing of course the "{}" bits with HTML "<>" tags)

{SCRIPT TYPE="text/javascript"}
{!--
// protected email script by Joe Maller
// JavaScripts available at http://www.joemaller.com
// this script is free to use and distribute
// but please credit me and/or link to my site

emailE=('USERNAME@' + 'DOMAINNAME.COM')
document.write('{A href="mailto:' + emailE + '"}' + emailE + '{/a}')

//--}
{/script}

And replacing of course the username and domain name with your own. I'm not sure how effective it is, but I do think it has some level of effectiveness (I get the fewest spams at my work addy compared to my co-workers, and I'm inclined to attribute it to this).

- Spampal.org is free, but I don't know if it even works much. You can try it out. Knowspam.net is a pay-service, but according to reports is supposed to be very good (I don't use it so I have no idea).

I'm sure there are other tactics we can look up, according to your needs. Good luck on it!

Lynn :)
-- the S&S and Jupiter one!

Hi Lynn!

Wow ... thanks for all the suggestions. My web host does have SpamAssassin (those 200 messages a day are just the ones that get through that!). It also has an optional spam blocker at an additional charge that I'm thinking about trying. I've actually cut the spam back down to reasonable levels just by disallowing emails that aren't to a specific address at my web host. (i.e. it used to be, if someone sent an email to "blah@laylalawlor.com" it would get shuffled into my main email box. Now it just gets trashed.) It's funny how compared to 250 spams per day, 60 seems downright reasonable, when I used to think 30 was way too many!

I like that little javascript to keep email addys from getting spam-spidered. I may use that -- or else implement a formmail script ... I hate to do that because I generally don't like using them; it feels like my email is just getting shuffled off into the void. But if it keeps me from getting deluged with spam, it'd be worth it, I suppose.

At least you've gotten me thinking outside the box I was in. Thank you!!

F***ing Spam

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