1 Good Reason - Internet Marketing

Managing the Email Mess

or

“Do they know something about me, and is that why they keep sending me these ads?”

If you think your spam is bad… my Email Address is on dozens and dozens of Web Pages. In addition I’m not shy about putting my Email Address out there for others to find. I take part in UseNet News Groups, which are targeted by spammers who scan the messages for email addresses. So how in world can I possibly find the messages that matter among the hundreds I get every day? Here are a few tips:

1. Colors: I use colors to separate my email into groups. All my customer’s messages are Red, Newsletters and other periodical information is Green, and personal messages are Blue. Notice how well that stands out in this paragraph? In MS Outlook you simply select the messages you want to make a color and then go to Tools-Organize- click on colors and follow the instructions. Outlook Express doesn’t support this function-consider switching to Thunderbird, read on…
2. Disposable Email Address DEA- Earlier I mentioned that I take part in several News Groups. When a post a message to the open public forums I use a special email address, covertchrisemail, which I use exclusively for public email posting. If it becomes too spam filled, I can just delete that address and make up a new address to replace it. Before I delete it I’ll let those few keepers on that address know my new email address.
3. Built in AntiSpam Eradicator, BASE- When I’m posting to public forums I also modify my DEA to: covertchris@SPAMSSUXbigfoot.com that is usually recognized by humans, and hopefully not Spam Machines as a doctored email. If you pull out the capital letters SPAMSSUX you get my good email address.
4. As a Web Master I offer my clients a spam hidden email address for their web pages. This technique uses a programming trick to make the email address much harder for spam-bots to find when they search the web site. If you don’t have one and want one, contact me or your web master.
5. I mentioned Thunderbird in #1 above. It is a new email program that I have personally switched to using instead of MS Outlook. You’ll find a link to it on my Downloads Page. Thunderbird has a unique feature for spam that is really great. You mark spam messages and the program learns as you go along. This gives me a great deal of control and the spam messages are on my computer where I can check to make sure there aren’t any important messages that are in there by mistake.
   Another great advantage of Thunderbird is that it isn’t MS Outlook which means that any viruses or other programs designed to take advantage of their weaknesses won’t work on my computer.

And finally, real help is on the way. The W3C is working on a new email format which will eliminate faked email return addresses and reduce the hazards of viruses etc from email. Hopefully this will make a tremendous dent in the current glut of spam. However, don’t hold your breath we won’t see anything until the end of this year or next year.