We ended last time talking about HTML emails, and how the images contained therein can tell a spammer that you’ve opened the spam email they sent to you, thus verifying that your email address is a “live one”, ripe for the spamming. To make matters worse, the only action you needed to take to help the spammer spam is to open the email message. So, don’t open it. Or, actually, don’t load the images.

Chances are your “full-featured” email application has the ability (through a selection in the application preferences) to prohibit the display of images or embedded objects in HTML messages. But, you say, “Wait a minute. I get a lot of HTML email from legitimate sources, and I want to see the images”. Fair enough. So, there’s also a good chance your email application’s Junk mail filtering system will automatically disable the loading of images in any HTML email it believes is spam, as well as do nice stuff like putting the suspected spam in a Junk mailbox for you. As long as it’s in the Junk mailbox, the image loading is disabled. Pretty easy, eh?

Another way you can help spammers find you is to put your email address on a web site. Spammers have little “web bots” that scurry around the internet looking through the coding of web pages for text in email address format. If you have a personal web site and must display your email address, consider putting your email address in the form of a text image. However, if you then make the image a link to click to send you an email, you have defeated the purpose. The link contains the word “mailto” that those nasty little web bots are looking for.

Internet marketers and spammers prey upon the most fundamental of our human traits. We love to think we’re getting something for free. We revel in the notion that we may have paid less for something than others have. We get all giggly being told we’re part of an “exclusive” anything. We’ve always got the time to talk about ourselves.

So, here you are with your new email address, roaming wide-eyed around the internet big city. “Look there! I can get a free catalog and monthly email newsletter just by putting my email address in this form and clicking OK”. “And over here, I can become a member of the Platinum club”. “ What possible harm can this online survey cause?” “Oh, my. There’s that street my mother told me about. I won’t go all the way in there, but for just my email address I can take a quick peek in and look around. Heck, no one will ever know.” You get the point.

Here’s an undeniable truth of online living. The less reputable the website you stick your email address into, the more likely your address (and any other information you provide) will be sold and exploited. That’s just the way it is.

What can you do to decrease your potential to receive spam? Don’t ever send email to anyone. Email abstinence. OK, OK, I know, that sort of defeats the purpose of having email in the first place, so that obviously won’t work. What will work?

Don’t ever reply to a spammer’s email, either to buy anything, or to get off the mailing list. You’ll just open the floodgates.

Sometimes spam comes from your friends, despite their good intentions. Next time we’ll look into how we spam ourselves, and how to keep spam, if we have to get it, as far away from us as possible.

© 2004 Peter F. Zimowski