Are you sick and tired of opening your email account every day only to find countless amounts of uninvited email? Email that includes bold and upsetting statements like: “product recommended by Mary”, Prayed “make $6,000,000,000.00 overnight…” Prayed “buy Viagra now”... and so?

Are you tired of going through your “junk” filter every day only to receive an email or two that you were really expecting to receive, but were buried on spam pages? If you fall victim to any of these spam issues, read on for some HUGE tips on how to prevent spam in your business.

Create an alternate email address by listing the company, URL, etc.

As a small business owner or employee (depending on your job duties), you may be required to give out your email address for many different reasons. Signing up for: webinars, newsletters, business directories, search engines, or other products or services that capture your data can be a BIG problem!

Most companies implement a “privacy policy”, which generally states how your personal information will not be used to send you spam or to disclose your information to third parties. Unfortunately, not many companies can be trusted to safeguard your data, and many companies forward your email address and name to many other third parties, greatly increasing the amount of spam you will receive. Always use an alternate “disposable” email address, to be used when signing up for anything online; including subscriptions and reports. Creating and using an alternate email address will go a long way in preventing spam at your business!

When registering a domain, get a “private registration” so that no one can see your email address and contact information, to help prevent spam.

Private domain name registration is a BIG necessity, in your quest to prevent spam. When you register a domain name, your contact information or the contact information of the person who registered the site may be displayed to the general public. In other words, a person could log into a website like the “Whois” directory (search it in your favorite engine), then enter their URL, and their contact information would be displayed for all to see. Imagine the ability of a spammer to access this website or a similar one; find your REAL name, your REAL email address and start spamming fast silly stuff outside of you!

By registering your domain under “private registration”, your contact information will not be displayed when a spammer decides to learn more about your company. It’s important to note that while a private registry “hides” your contact information, there are ways for expert spammers to circumvent this protection barrier.

Set the spam inbox to “high” depending on the software you are using

An obvious but overlooked feature within most people’s email software is the “spam” or “filtering” option. Although the name of the spam filter varies depending on the company that created the software (or website), they generally all serve the same purpose. Having the spam filter set too low can result in a large amount of spam getting into your inbox. Having the spam filter set too high can result in many of the emails you really want to receive being marked as spam.

Personally, I recommend setting the filtering to “high”, rather than low or moderate. This will catch most if not all of the spam, but it will also catch a lot of your legitimate email. You can create “rules” in your email settings to allow email from certain domains (URLs) or certain names to always go to your inbox. If your spam filter is off or “low”, you should definitely make the necessary change today, to help prevent spam from flooding your inbox.

Try to refrain from creating “easy” email addresses, such as one that uses the first letter of your full first name and last name.

Spammers are smart and resourceful people most of the time. Suppose your first and last name appear on your company’s website. If your name is John Smith, and the name appears on your website, a spammer will try variations of your name like: jsmith(at)yourcompany.com, or johnsmith(at)yourcompany.com, or john(at)yourcompany. .com.

If any of those email addresses belong to YOU, guess who’s going to get a bunch of spam? If you! Always remember to be aware of the fact that spammers can “guess” your email address, whenever you create an email address or have one created for your business or company. This will be a very important step in preventing spam from flooding your account!

Delete cookies from your Internet browser daily (spammers can track stored cookies)

One rarely used tactic in the fight to prevent spam is to change the “history” settings of your Internet browser. When your Internet browser stores cookies and files on your computer, websites load faster and many websites “remember” information you may have submitted during your last visit to the website. History settings also allow an Internet browser to store websites that have been visited in the last hour, day, week, and even months.

Unfortunately, as convenient as it may seem to keep your history settings set to 30, 60 and 90 days, keeping cookies stored in your browser (on your computer) can cause the spam email you receive to increase!

Believe it or not, cookies can be “read” by websites you visit, spyware and adware installed on your computer, and in other ways. Cookies contain information about your Internet browsing habits, as well as personal information that you may not want shared with the general online community; including: which sites were visited, how long each site was visited, the products/services/topic of the sites visited and more.

Would you like a spammer to have such detailed information about your viewing habits? Can you imagine receiving countless emails directly related to the products you buy and the websites you visit? Always delete cookies regularly from your internet browser, or disable your browser’s ability to store cookies and history entirely.