Reduce your visibility to Spammers by hiding your email address from harvesting robots.

Spam     Wrongly Identified Spam    

Method of Reduce Your Visibility

To avoid getting increased amounts of Spam and to gradually reduce the amount of Spam you get you should Reduce Your Visibility to Spammers. You can do this in various ways:

• never EVER answer Spam - answering SPAM (even clicking 'unsubscribe') confirms your email address (confirmed addresses get more Spam).
• AVOID opening Spam - especially in your email program shows all pictures automatically (fortunately Outlook 2007 doesn't).

Spammers harvest email addresses from web pages and sell them on. Confirmed addresses are worth more. The lists are sold on to other Spammers and lists of 'confirmed' email addresses.

To avoid your address being harvested:

• Disguise Your Email Address on web pages to prevent them from being 'harvested'.
• Remove Mailto Addresses from web pages - email address are 'harvested' from web pages by Spammers, see below for details.
• Use The ISS Feedback System - replace your email address on a web page with a link to the ISS personalised feedback system.

The Spam problem is recognised world wide and attempts to block it are made at all levels.

Disguise Your Email Address  

To disguise your email address, remove the 'mailto' link then create/edit edit a 'manual' address the style of one of the following:

• in your HTML editor type:
  email: a.surname@lancaster.ac.uk
  the '@' will appear as @ on the web page e.g.
  a.surname@lancaster.ac.uk
  The @ version of the @ sign will not work as an @ sign, when address is harvested. For extra security you could consider substituting . for the full stops.
• or type:
  email: a DOT surname AT lancaster DOT ac DOT uk
  leaving people 'interpret' the address.
• or create a bitmap picture of your email address and add an ALT tag e.g.
  email:

ISS Feedback System 

ISS has a feedback system that allows users to click on your name in a webpage and get a pop-up mail form to send you a message safely (without risk of attracting Spam).

(ISS) Feedback System has many advantages and should be considered as an alternative to 'mail to' or putting your 'disguised' email address on a website..

Remove 'Mailto Code' From Website

The HTML 'Mailto' instruction allows 'click to reply' on a webpage. The HTML code looks like this: < href="mailto:j.bloggs@lancaster.ac.uk">Jo Bloggs</a> which produces Jo Bloggs (click but don't send).

The HTML 'mailto' easy for Spammers to harvest, it should not be used.

Email Address Guessing

Spammers also guess email addresses e.g. a.smith@lancaster.ac.uk, b.smith@lancaster.ac.uk, c.smith@lancaster.ac.uk - here at Lancaster University we are vulnerable to this method of harvesting email addresses. The only way to fight this is to ensure that you never reply to Spam, as confirmed email addresses are more valuable to spammers.

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