How to hide from spammers

How to hide from spammers

If you send or receive e-mail, you probably get spam. Maybe a lot of spam. Ever wonder why you get so much junk e-mail? It's a lucrative business. It's cheap to send out millions, even billions, of e-mail messages. Go figure: if even a tiny percentage of a hundred million people buy something in response to an e-mail message, that's a lot! So what can you do about spam? Quite a bit, as it turns out. Let's explore some of the ways you can stop the deluge.

Be careful about disclosing your e-mail address

Some spammers get address lists from Web sites where you may have signed up for free offers, ordered something online, or entered a contest. They can also get your address from Internet white pages listings, newsgroups, resume postings, and chat rooms.

Follow these tips whenever you can:

Set up an e-mail address dedicated solely to Web transactions. Consider using a free mail service to set up an e-mail account for your online transactions. This will help you keep your real e-mail address private

Only share your primary e-mail address with people you know. Avoid listing your e-mail address in large Internet directories. Don't even post it on your own Web site.

Disguise your e-mail address. Use a disguised address whenever you post it to a newsgroup, chat room, or bulletin board. For example, you could give your e-mail address as "s0me0ne@example.c0m" using "0" (zero) instead of "o." A person can interpret your address, but the automated programs that spammers use cannot.

Watch out for checked boxes. When you buy things online, companies sometimes pre-check boxes to indicate that it's fine to sell or give your e-mail address to responsible parties. Click the check box to clear it if you don't want the company to contact you