Avatar's Guide to Spam

Spam - Unsolicited emails, typically of a commercial nature, sent indiscriminately to multiple mailing lists, individuals, or newsgroups. Also known as junk email.

This guide helps you find out more about what you can do to prevent your business and your inbox being strangled by spam. This is the full extent to which we can advise you about preventing or minimising spam. If your spam problem persists, you may have to seek specialist advice.

• What You Can Do To Spam Proof Your Inbox
• What We Can Do To Help You Combat Spam
• Spam Filtering Options From Your ISP
• Spam Filtering Options on Your Computer

The Growth Of Spam

Spammers use spam bots (software programs) to help them collect email addresses found on the Internet and then send out unsolicited (or spam) emails. The size of the spam problem is mind-boggling. Back in 1978, an email spam was sent to 600 email addresses. According to research into the spam epidemic by June 2006, this figure had exploded with over 55 billion spam emails being sent every day.

This rose to an even more staggering 85 billion spam mails sent every day by December 2006. With spam accounting for up to 85% of 'abusive' or 'unsolicited' mail, spam prevention measures are well worth serious consideration. Spam effects workplace productivity and efficiency. It can block legitimate emails getting through and be extremely irritating to deal with.

What You Can Do To Spam Proof Your Inbox

It's almost impossible to 100% spam-proof yourself, but there are a few things you can do to reduce the amount of spam in your inbox:

• Try to stay off spam mailing lists in the first place by submitting your email address to select Web sites only.
• Check what a site's privacy policy is before giving away your email address.
• Check whether you have marked any boxes relevant to the use of your email address.
• Use a secondary, disposable email address for online forms, subscriptions, forums, chat rooms and blogs (tip: use a name made up of an initial and a surname for your throwaway email address, not popular prefixes like "info", "sales" or "enquiries").
• Do not respond to spam emails, just delete them.

What We Can Do To Help You Combat Spam

We may host your Web site, but we cannot control what types of emails are sent through to your account. Our service acts as your online postman only - we do not determine what gets put into the mail itself.

However, we can help you minimise spam from your Web site and from an existing email account in the following ways:

• Captcha Code
  If your Web site forms are hosted with Avatar, we can add a 'captcha code'. This is a code made up of 5 or 6 characters, which the user of the form has to enter into the form before it is submitted.
  This service costs $120+gst per form.
  View an example of a form using captcha code at the location below,
  http://www.avatar.co.nz/contact-us.html
• Remove Email Addresses from Your Web Site
  We can remove the text version of your email address on your Web site and replace it with an image version of email address or a link to your contact form.
  Any Web Updates that are made to effect these changes to your Web site are charged at our usual standard hourly rate ($120+gst per hour, or pro rata 15 minutes)

You may also wish to search the Internet for free spam filter software. Generally speaking, you get what you pay for, so if a deal looks too good to be true, it probably is.

These are the only measures that we can offer.

Spam Filtering Options From Your ISP

You can also contact your ISP (your Internet Service Provider). They may also be able to offer you some spam filter options. Typically you can set this up on your account through your administration area, which you should have a username and password for. To find out more about your options, you will need to contact your ISP directly.View more listings for Internet Service Providers (ISPs) in New Zealand.

Spam Filtering Options on Your Computer

There are also a couple things that you can on your computer to help minimise the amount of spam coming through to your inbox:

• Set up spam filters in your email client (e.g. Outlook Express, Mozilla Thunderbird).
• Check your spam folder or junk mail folder on a regular basis to make sure you access the legitimate emails.

Contact Us

If you would like to use any of the solutions offered by Avatar, please contact us with your requirements.