Posts Tagged ‘spam’

A new video tutorial has been added to the main site. An advantage of owning a custom cms web design is you may add, edit, or delete content unassisted.

With a matching custom WordPress theme for your blog or podcast, you also have a comment spam magnet which prompted this WordPress anti-spam video tutorial.

Here’s an excerpt explaining results:

“Today’s tutorial using SI CAPTCHA solved my comment spam problem. The advice in this custom cms training video tutorial allowed me to reduce that 100 per day to zero instantly.”

Mini-review: The SI in SI CAPTCHA stands for Secure Image which is a spam solution I have used for years in custom cms web design. The WordPress plugin version uses many of the same files and was already proven to be an effective tool to fight spam robots from putting comment spam in contact forms, so it was an easy choice.

Watch the video to learn how you can download, install, and activate this WordPress anti-spam solution in less than 3 minutes! After making the video I used a stopwatch to time the installation on another blog and actual time from log-in to done was 1:23, yes 1 minute and 23 seconds.

Spam blacklists, also called blocklists, are actually a network of spam tracking sites that create databases of known spammers. These services list IP addresses and IP ranges known to send unsolicited bulk email, or UBE. One problem of blacklists is the potential for cutting off legitimate users, especially in the case of people who fall into a range of blocked IP addresses shared with a real spammer.

Visit this authority site to test for a blocked IP at mail-abuse.com. Having an IP listed in a database may not mean your email will always be blocked, yet if your outgoing service gets a complaint, it could cause short-term or extended grief. Here’s why.

Being in one of the spam databases is a red flag and the decision to block a particular email is not normally made by the outgoing email server, but by the recipient’s incoming email service provider. The majority of them filter incoming email for spam. Most internet service providers subscribe to these databases to instantly check email senders to help protect their users and reputation.

The database is only one factor in identifying spam. Normally incoming filtering systems would screen the IP by accessing blacklist databases, and then scanning the content within the message body to determine if it should be allowed, marked suspect, or blocked. As stated earlier, if your IP is within a numerical range of IP addresses assigned to your ISP, you could get caught up and added to a blacklist if a real spammer is within that range.

Once you encounter bounced email coming back from known contacts with any negative reference to spam or blacklists, take action. Don’t wait. My advice for correcting the situation is to begin by contacting your ISP, Internet Service Provider, give them the details, and let the experts resolve the issues.

If you are learning what I teach about the importance of backlinks for search engine optimization, or seo, don’t overlook my advice to avoid link schemes or link farms. Lately it seems link exchange requests are gaining popularity with spammers.

The last few months link exchange requests are showing up almost daily in my email inbox. My advice for my small business clients is ignoring people who address you as “Dear Webmaster” and delete their message. If they offer an option to “opt out” to cease receiving their solicitations, don’t do it. Some junk mailers will comply with your request to be removed from their mail list, and then give or sell your email address to someone else. The best choice is ignore the message because once you reply to make the opt-out request, you just confirmed they have a valid email address to pass on to cohorts.

Bonus tip: In Outlook, when you highlight an email message and press the delete button to get rid of it, that message is still held on your computer. Instead, highlight the offending message and then hold the shift key while you press the delete key once, and you get the warning “Are you sure you want to delete this message permanently?” which means that the junk is not only gone, it cannot be retrieved. Select “yes” to delete the email message forever.

In previous posts and in my series of free pdf seo reports for do-it-yourself website promotion, I’ve championed the value of backlinks to your site. Be careful. The most recent requests coming to me from junk mailers are three way link schemes. You link to us, and we have another third site that will link to you.

Their strategy is deceptive because they want to create the appearance of voluntary one-way links. Forget the fact that their inbound link will be from a totally unrelated site, and has zero value to you, they are conspiring to create false popularity of their websites. Any deceptive means for improving your standing with search engines will eventually be caught. You will be punished, so don’t do it.

My oldest email account goes back to the last century, and sometimes it’s tough giving up an old friend. The address gets so much spam that I don’t use it and so it gets checked infrequently. I recommend small business owners check their email more often. Imagine the surprise with the following load of email since the last time I did Spring Cleaning when it really was Spring.

You have 1,842 unread messages with 155 in the inbox and 1,687 in the bulk folder. Those took 5-10 minutes to delete, and in the end my previously saved email was down to 5. One is a resource that my readers may enjoy. In February I recommended people take a typing course. From the 5 emails I had saved, here’s a typing related message with a link to an online typing test that may be a resource worth a moment of your time.

TYPINGTEST.COM TEST RESULTS

Jim Degerstrom,

You have today completed TypingMaster’s On-line
Typing Test with the following results:

Test Time: 1 min.
Typing Speed: 70 WPM
Accuracy: 100 %

NET SPEED: 70 WPM

Looking back at my last year in high school, the choice to take typing proved valuable for my career 20 years later hand coding XHTML for websites. Today’s lesson is keep an eye on dormant email accounts, plus another reminder that it’s never too late to learn how to type. Writing web content, advice articles, press releases, and everyday correspondence is much more efficient even at 35-40 words per minute if you’ve never learned touch typing before.

Join the fight against Spam. Here’s how small business owners can help, and it only takes 1 minute. I was getting fed up after I received identical email multiple times in one day from different Gmail addresses, and each was UCE or Unsolicited Commercial Email, asking for reciprocal links. Following my first impulse to report this to Google, who owns and provides the Gmail service, I learned that both Gmail addresses were fake, or spoofed. Here’s my advice on how to report UCE Spam.

If you own a small business in the USA, the Federal Trade Commission will investigate complaints of UCE. To report, all you must do is open the suspicious email and click “forward” and enter spam@uce.gov as the forwarding address, and then click “send” to submit your email to the FTC. You may want to read the FTC’s Privacy Policy for assurance your identity will remain anonymous. If you are uncomfortable sending by email, you may complete the FTC complaint form online through their secure and encrypted site.

In the example above, Google was innocent. The spammers used a technique called “spoofing” in violation of the CAN-SPAM Act of 2003, and masked their real identity using special coding to avoid tracing. Commercial email solicitations to unknown parties where no existing business relationship exists, must include an unsubscribe option to opt-out of receiving future mailings, also. The identical messages I received from different addresses did not.

Is someone sending junk mail to your small business? Use the FTC forwarding email to report violations. Note: If you have an existing business relationship with a company the rules are different. While it is legal to send email to known business contacts, your email message may not contain false or misleading routing information, but otherwise is exempt from most provisions of the CAN-SPAM Act.

Read this related article that I wrote in August 2006 entitled Don’t Ignore Legal Obligations of The CAN-SPAM Act to learn the provisions of commercial email you receive, or send.

This is an excerpt from a published article I wrote. There is no excuse for forwarding what I call friendly spam which is junk email from known contacts which appears convincing, but is actually spam. Small business owners should be cautious, or you may risk loss in credibility. In most cases the spam contains an alarming message quoted from a supposedly credible source that shocks the reader and requests that you forward this to everyone you know.

My advice for everyone including small business owners is visit the Urban Legends website and do a search on key words in the topic of any email you receive begging you to forward it to everyone you know. Urban Legends at www.snopes.com is my choice for debunking false emails. They track and investigate vast numbers of email hoaxes and give detailed reports on each with either a true or false conclusion. It is extremely rare that I search a suspicious message and find out that Urban Legends determined it was not a hoax, but that happens, too.

Use caution before forwarding email. Your credibility could be at stake. Read the full article published online here including tips for protecting your small business contact identities.