Web Hosting Talk : Web Hosting Main Forums : Web Design and Content : Preventing Email Spam

[survivorshrine]

I have my email address posted in the footer of my website but lately, I have received complaints from others that I have attempted to send file attachments with hazardous material inside it. Any idea how I can prevent my email name from being abused by spammers?

[Loon]

If you're being used as the "from" address in those type of emails it's normally because your address was on some sort of contact list (usually MSN) of somebody that was infected with the trojan the email is trying to pass round. Not really anything you can do about it.

If you want to reduce the amount of spam you get yourself, you could replace your email on your site with an image or just write it as something like "you at domain dot com"

[Zopester]

You could use an encoder, like this rather good one, but this does require your user having javascript enabled for the link to work. I'd suggest using this, and adding the "me at my domain dot com" in a <noscript> element to cover all bases.

[survivorshrine]

Thanks Loon and Zopester for your help, I will test the results and see how they turn out.

[crysi5]

i've been having the same problems as well only instead of being from my actual email say webmaster@domain.com its from info@domain.com << which doesn't exist

[inimino]

Implement SPF for your domain and as SPF is adopted this will reduce this problem.

[hostpulse]

Hi survivorshrine,

The usual ways is to place an image of your email address on your website. If you want to include signature, send them a link to your contact page.. where they can contact u either by email, phone or contact form.

Have a nice day

Terence L

[BigBison]

Like it or not, SPF is part of 'Sender ID' now, here's a quote from a recent article:

Sender ID is the consolidation of Microsoft's Caller ID for E-mail and Meng Weng Wong's Sender Policy Framework (SPF).

Here's a related article.

[inimino]

Originally posted by BigBison
Like it or not, SPF is part of 'Sender ID' now

Not quite.

Actually, as with so many other things, MS tried to "absorb" SPF into Sender ID. That doesn't mean the industry will adopt Sender ID. In fact Sender ID has been fairly soundly rejected by several important groups.

The IETF task force on this, MARID, recently dispanded without proposing a standard. At this point, SPF is still the closest thing to an accepted standard. Whether SPF will be widely adopted remains to be seen, but SPF and Sender ID are still very distinct, despite whatever MS may say. SPF has much better chances of industry acceptance than SenderID did, largely because of MS's licensing blunders.