Spam: can it be avoided?
The short answer is, probably not. Email addresses are collected by "address harvesters" in many different ways, and if you use the internet at all your address is likely to fall into their net at some point. However there are some things which increase your exposure to spam, and you should avoid these where possible.
- Address harvesters look in chat rooms for addresses, so think twice before registering for a chat room.
- If you give your address on your own web pages it is very likely to be harvested.
- If you respond to a piece of spam your response will confirm that your address is valid, and so will make spam-merchants more likely to use it -- so never reply to the offers that some spam-writers make to remove you from their list.
- The vacation mailer will sometimes send its automatic response to spam messages, and in these cases might have the same effect of confirming that your address is valid.
Not everyone can avoid all these things. If you are a web author you cannot avoid putting a contact address on your pages; the vacation mailer is for some people an essential tool. You have to balance the risk of increasing your exposure to spam against the advantage of using the facilities.
Whatever you do, you are unlikely to be spared spam for ever. Many spam messages are sent to randomly generated addresses. So we would not advise you to forego useful facilities like the Out of Office messages just in the hope of staying clear of spam.
