How to prevent unsolicited or spam emails through your business website
by ORionDig
Unsolicited commercial emails are commonly referred to as “spam.” Such emails often come in the form
of unwanted messages or advertisements. Dealing with them involves knowing how to recognize them,
how to alter your online behavior and what tools to use. The following is a guide on how to prevent
unsolicited commercial email.
Stop spam from slowing down your day I If your website allows Blog Comments and Contact Form
messages, you probably already know how annoying it is to receive spam from fictitious SEO companies,
pharmaceutical companies and so on —sent from recipients with questionable names such as
Shackleford Mumaw, Lovely Rathore or even Jennifer Lopez! With numbers soaring to 121 unwanted
emails every day, it is reasonable to look for better alternatives to the Delete button.
There is no silver bullet to stop spam from coming through, though there is a couple of nifty tricks that |
will definitely help you in your crusade against unsolicited emails.
CONTACT FORM VS EMAIL LISTED ON THE WEBSITE
A contact form on your website is a good way to allow your visitors to send you a message, but on some occasions, your visitors might prefer using your email account instead. There is no straight answer to
what is the best option, however listing your email account on your website is an open invitation to
spambots and email list providers (companies that collect and sell lists of email accounts to third
parties). The good news is, with the help of some handy plugins, you can encrypt the email address for
spambots crawling your website —however, this is a new method and should be tested accordingly.
CAPTCHAS
Spambots are designed to write malicious comments and messages on websites through an automated
system. By adding a CAPTCHA to your Contact Form and to your blog settings you can dramatically
improve your immunity to spam bots.
USE A SEPARATE EMAIL ACCOUNT
If you are planning to signup to any service online you should consider using a “secondary” email
account on the Registration Form. This way you can reduce the odds of your primary email address
getting subscribed to a mailing list without your consent.
MailScanner
Regardless of the hosting provider, you have chosen, if you subscribed to a traditional cPanel account
you should be able to access the cPanel Dashboard and find the tool MailScanner — under the Emails
tab. It’s an open-source mail filter used to identify and stop spam through a detection engine aptly
called Spamassassin. The configuration is pretty straightforward and the whole process is automated.
Best of all, it’s free!
MANUAL EMAIL FILTERS
You can, of course, include specific filters in your email client (or even on your server) based on specific
keywords that tend to appear reoccurring in the spam you receive. If you’re not quite sure how to do
that, here are some simple instructions for Apple Mail and for Microsoft Outlook. If you prefer handling it
at the server level and you have access to your server cPanel, then head over to Global Email Filters (under
the Emails tab).
Regardless of the approach you choose to tackle this issue, keep in mind that it’s an ongoing task and
some periodical ‘housekeeping’ will be required.
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