Encode Your eMail Address ... Now!

"A Little Known Trick To Cut Spam By 90% Or More!"

How much spam did you get today?

It seems you don't have to be online five minutes before your inbox is swamped with all sorts of emails from people and companies you've never heard of. And if you didn't know it before, it's then when you realise that spam sucks. Big time.

I'm not talking about the odd uninvited email you might get from someone. That comes with the territory. By "spam" I mean the stuff that is blasted to thousands of unwilling recipients:

UNSOLICITED, BULK COMMERCIAL EMAIL.

So how to stop it?

Well, lets be honest - you can't. Not entirely. But it's easy to avoid as much as 90% the of spam you get. Let me explain...

Fixing The Leaks Is Better Than Bailing Out

Dealing with this junk wastes precious time and resources. Yours and mine. And although there are many spam filtering applications available, they take time to set up, have to be constantly adjusted, and more often than not cause as many problems as they solve.

The simple fact is that to filter out ALL spam, you're also going to inadvertently filter out some of the legitimate email you WANT to read.

It's unavoidable. No spam filter will ever be infallible.

Relying on a spam filter is a bit like bailing water out of a leaky boat instead of plugging the holes.

Until you fix the leaks, you're fighting a constant battle to stay afloat. And if you don't bail fast enough, you'll sink!

In the context of spam, fixing the leaks means preventing your addresses from getting into the spammer's grubby little hands in the first place.

Spam Bots Are Your Number One Enemy!

Spam Bots trawl the net much like search engine spiders. The big difference is that they only record the email addresses found on a Web page.

They create huge lists of addresses which are used to send spam.

But it doesn't end there ...

These lists are often sold to many other spammers, as well as the naive and misled who believe they're buying opt-in lists.

Spam Bots are the #1 reason why webmasters are drowning in spam!

It's Easy To Fight Back When You Know How!

All you need to do is encode all your email addresses into HTML so that spam bots can't read them.

If they can't read your address, they can't add it to their list.

As it's HTML, encoded addresses will display and behave exactly the same on a Web page as those written in regular Roman text.

Here's a quick way you can do it:

Every word has vowels, so instead of encoding all the letters, we can simplify things by only translating the vowels, the "@" and the "com" in your email address, plus the "mailto:" portion of the link.

Your address will still be totally unreadable to a spam bot.

Special Code To Instantly Hide Your Email Addresses

I've encoded all the essential elements for you below, so you can refer to them whenever needed:

mailto: = mailto:

@ = @

com = com

a = a

e = e

i = i

o = o

u = u

Here's the format of the code, should you want to go further:

   [Ampersand][Hash][ASCII Number][Semicolon]
a =        &          #               97                 ;

Note: Some people simply replace the "@" in their address with the code version. I don't think that's sufficient. Spammers only have to teach the software to recognize that one coded letter and your sunk. Also, some spam bots search for the "mailto" link because whatever follows must be an email address, so I recommend you encode that too.

A Complete Email Encoding Example

"@nowsell.com" (my domain) would become:

@nowsell.com

Let's break that down so you can see it more easily:

[@][n][o][w][s][e][l][l][.][c][o][m]

   @       n       o       w   s      e       l   l    .      c       o     m

Now let's look at a full HTML mailto link:

<.a href="mailto:bizbits@nowsell.com">bizbits@nowsell.com<./a>

(NOTE: A period "." has been added after each "<" here only to ensure the link appears as raw HTML in this email.)

bizbits@nowsell.com (my ezine) would be:

bizbits&#64;n&#111;ws&#101;ll.&#99;o&#109;

Or we could go further:

b&#105;zb&#105;ts&#64;n&#111;ws&#101;ll.&#99;o&#109;

Add the "mailto:" in front for the link portion:

&#109;&#97;&#105;&#108;&#116;&#111:
bizbits&#64;n&#111;ws&#101;ll .&#99;o&#109;

And the full link is:

<.a href= "&#109;&#97;&#105;&#108;&#116;&#111:
bizbits&#64;n&#111;ws&#101;ll.&#99;o&#109;">
bizbits&#64;n&#111;ws&#101;ll.&#99;o&#109;<./a>

<--- Power Tip --- >
If you use several different addresses in the form of "something@yourdomain.com," leave the "something" portion of the email address unencoded. You can then use the "search and replace" function of a text or HTML editor to update all the addresses on your site at once. Search for "@yourdomain.com" and then "mailto:" replacing each with the encoded versions.
<--- Power Tip --- >

Get Smart And Protect Your Web Site

I'm not guaranteeing email address encoding will work in every case. It's possible there could be some sophisticated spam bots out there that can translate the HTML code. But even if they exist, what percentage of spammers are likely to have that kind of high-end gear?

Not many, I bet.

Kill spam at the root. Protect your Web site from the scourge of the spam bots and you'll dramatically reduce the amount of spam you get. If you find the code difficult, use software like mine to do it all for you. But whatever you do, you MUST encode all of your email addresses ... Now!

© 2002 Azam Corry "Do it Better. Do it Faster. Do it Right!"

Online since 1998, Azam Corry can help you succeed. No-Bull
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