1) Spammers get your email address from Web pages.
More than 97% of spam email is sent to email addresses that appear on web pages (either as plain text or as embedded mailto links). Even if it is embedded in a submittal form a spammer will find it unless it is encrypted. Ask the company that designed your webpage to encrypt any page that your email address appears. If the company that designed your webpage does not understand the necessity of doing so, find another company.



2) It's a myth that unsubscribing leads to more spam.
You often hear people say "you should never try to unsubscribe when you receive a spam message since spammers use your response to prove you exist and then you get more spam.. " Research indicates that this is untrue. Most companies will remove your name from their list when requested.


3) Viewing Spam Messages Is What Generates More Spam.
The fact is that you don't have to respond to a spam message to verify that your e-mail address is valid. Merely opening spam messages or viewing them in the "preview pane" of Microsoft Outlook, Outlook Express, and other e-mail programs, can reveal something about you automatically. It usually informs spammers that you saw a message, at least momentarily. How does the fact that you opened or previewed a spam message let a spammer know that your e-mail address is working? One study found that: 83% of spam messages contain a small image that, when downloaded for display by your e-mail program, confirms your existence. Addresses in the study that received spam messages but didn't view them received a volume of spam that remained roughly steady; By contrast, addresses that opened or previewed all the incoming spam messages received approximately double the volume of spam two weeks later, compared to the "non-viewing" addresses. So, do NOT use the preview pane.

For #3, if you use Thunderbird it says "The viewer wants confirmation, would you like to give it?" You can say no to that. Also, another way to do it is to on your webpage but youremail@NOSPAMyoursite.com and put on your website that users should take out the NOSPAM or you could to youremail[at]yoursite.com and have users change [at] to an @

Yeah, that is a better way of preventing it. Many websites I know use that.

You can also use a bogus email when subscribing to unfamiliar websites.

Wheres that?

the problem with that: confirmation problems...if they have a privacy policy and do not use it though i think you could sue them...i think neopets does not use their privacy policy...

any tips on encrypting html pages? zeck

uhh..well, you could use characters like &nsbp; but for real characters and im pretty sure that will help with some bots, umm...for encrypting forums you could use MD5 but i'm not completely sure how you do it, easy tutorials on google though, please give me more specifics on what you mean.

try http://mytrashmail.com
that's for incoming mails no sign up required!
but anyone can view it and it's slow..
mainly used for signups that doesn't really interest you
but need confirmation

:P That's wierd...well, I dont like that stuff so I'll just sneak on out of here *sneaks out*

i never get spam but good tut

Thanx No more spam from now on

any tips on encrypting html pages? zeck

I hate getting that junk mail in my inbox asking me if I wanna free xbbox360, ps3 or a bigger weiner lol

OMFG!! THNAK YOU!!! i get soo much spam in my gmail account and i wondered why cuz i really never used it....thnxs tho