E-Mail Harvesting - a Headache for Your Internet Home Business

A Home Business Article Contributed by Sharon Hill

Protecting Your Internet Home Business e-Mail from Unwanted Intrusion

Is your Internet home business e-mailing getting clogged up with unwanted messages about making a million dollars in one day, losing 40 pounds in one month, and other things about which you have no interest, or any time for? These spammers are using sophisticated computer programs to search public areas of the Internet, home business as well as personal use areas, to create lists of e-mail addresses. They use such online resources as newsgroups, chat rooms, bulletin boards, web pages and so forth.

The FTC (Federal Trade Commission) actually did some undercover investigation to determine where spamming was most prominent - which resources these annoying creatures used most often. The FTC created 250 fake e-mail addresses. They used the addresses to access web sites, join newsgroups, participate in chat rooms, message boards and online directories, created domain names, used instant messaging as well as resume and dating services. After six weeks of this use, these e-mails received 3349 spam mails.

What Was Learned about Internet Home Business Spam

Here is what the undercover FTC investigators learned that can help your Internet home business avoid this kind of intrusion:

88 percent of the addresses that posted to web pages received spam; the same percentage received spam when they posted to newsgroups. Every email address that posted to chat rooms received spam e-mail. One even received a spam email message nine minutes after communicating in the chat room.

Posting to other areas of the Internet did not create as intense a spam response. Half of the addresses using free Internet web page services got spammed; 27 percent of users of message boards got spam e-mails; and only nine percent of those used in email service directories. "Who is" domain name service registries, instant messaging service users, and those email addresses that used resume services and dating services were free from spam.

The undercover investigators found, appallingly enough, that the spam had nothing to do with the email addresses. It didn't matter what the chosen address suggested about the owner, or where the owner had been on the Internet. Why this is appalling is that some e-mail posted to children's newsgroups and visiting sites and pages typically of interest to minors, received an extensive volume of spam about adult web sites, Internet work at home business opportunity schemes, and even sale of hallucinogenic drugs.

Protecting Your Internet Home Business from Spam

There are several things you can do to protect you and your business from spam. They include masking your email address. This won't fool a person, but so much of spam harvesting is automated and it will fool a spammer. A masking process would be, for example, converting your address of balloons4u@yahoo.com to balloons4U@spamaway.yahoo.com. Another option is to set up a second screen name for chatting - one not associated with your business web address preferably.

A third tactic is to use a disposable email service that sets up multiple accounts that are forwarding to your business address. Then, should one start to receive spam you can close it down.