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Part 1 of a 2 part series about combating spam.
Fact: We all hate spam.
Fact: Spam will never disappear.
Fact: There are plenty of ways to protect your email from spam.
We all hate it, we all get it. It’s been around for years. Last week I discussed changing your out-of-office message to not include your email address. This is one of many ways to help combat spam for your insurance agency. There are other options as well.
Displaying Email on your Website
It only takes a few lines of code for a spammer to write a program that will scan your website for email addresses. (It’s actually fairly easy to do)
If you choose to display email on your website it is important to do one of three things:
Option A: Encode the email address or use javascript to print the email address. Although not 100% effective; it this option is better than just printing your email address.
Option B: Use CAPTCHA (Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart.) CAPTCHA is a challenge response test where a user will have to enter characters that display in an image into a text box. Even though the largest companies have had their CAPTCHA hacked it is more effective than just encoding your email address.
Option C: Do not display your email address on your website, instead use a generic contact us box.
Any of the options above are better than taking no action. In my experience making it harder for spammers to scan your insurance agency website is the best defense. Spammers will just move on to another site if they are not having any luck with yours
Don’t give any website your email address.
Not giving out your email address isn’t really practical since most ecommerce sites require an email address to buy and sell and many sites require your email address to create an account. Every time you enter your email address on a website you are increasing your chance of spam.
Part 2 – How I am able to keep 99% of spam out of my inbox.
See Also: What Google Knows about Spam.
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