Email Aliases
AND NOTES ON AVOIDING SPAM
When you hire me to act as your web hosting service provider, I am not acting as your ISP (Internet Service Provider)... that's a different service, a different server.
You must have an ISP or be prepared to connect to the internet
through a 3rd party fixed or mobile service provider. They will provide you with your connection to the internet and the ability to setup email addresses:
<you@your_ISP.com>
When you have an
account with my web hosting service you get the ability to have an unlimited number of email aliases
as separate mailboxes that store mail on the server until you fetch the
mail or aliases set up as forwards that redirect the mail to your ISP mail
address <you@your_ISP.com> or a third party
mail provider like gmail
http://mail.google.com/mail/help/open.html.
If your domain name is <www.yourdomain.com>
then on the web hosting server your alias might be <yourname@yourdomain.com>.
If I am providing hosting only services (not managing or publishing your
website) then see
http://2358.ca/FAQ.htm#Mail to manage your mail accounts. The main
help file for mail management is here:
http://twiki.cpanel.net/twiki/bin/view/AllDocumentation/CpanelDocs/CpanelMail
If I am managing your website I will set up
an alias <yourname@yourdomain.com> on your
website contact page that will act as a Forward that redirects mail to
your target address <you@your_ISP.com> or <you@3rd_party_mail_provider.com>
(eg: a
gmail
account). I will not however set up mailboxes that store mail on the
server for you. If you want a mailbox on the hosting server, I will send
you the server login and password and mail management
help files so that you can manage your own mailbox set up. It is too
labour intensive for me to manage your mail.
NOTE: The problem with having your email address published on your website as a hyperlink so that a visitor to your site need only click on it
for the hyperlink to open up a blank email for them to commence writing to you (very
convenient)... is that the hyperlink contains your alias email address in the HTML code and it can be "harvested" by machine software called "spiders"
or "spambots" that "troll" the www from website to website collecting email addresses that then get
dumped into SPAM email databases and sold and resold to spammers who then send out multiple blind mailings to you and everyone else in the database.
An effective solution is to not publish the email
address as a hyperlink but instead display
the email address as a graphic which cannot be copied by trolling spiders. For example:
This is simply an image. It is a "black drawing on a white background picture" and there are no references to the email address represented in the HTML code that displays this image.
The only way a spammer could get this address is if
they manually type the address into their database.
Another alternative would be to have me display your email address but without the use of the "@" character, eg: you
[at] yourwebsite.com
Your reader would have to copy and paste your address into their mail program and
insert the "@"
character for
[at]. Again this would prevent the automatic harvesting of your email address by spambots crawling your
site. It would require a spammer to actually get off the couch and manually add your address to their list. Read my spammer profile essay: "Spam is Dead"
To cut spam out of your life, do the
following:
Set up an alias email address that will redirect mail to your ISP
mail address or a 3rd party provider like
gmail.
Keep your target address (your ISP or 3rd party mail address) confidential.
Set up your email program so that it displays only your alias on outgoing messages.
Use your alias for registering at websites.
Use your website address on all your printed material (not your email address)
because if you do have to change your email address you will not have to change your printed material.
Use a representation of your alias on your website without any hyperlink reference to the actual address in the HTML code as exampled on this page above.
If you do get spam, do not reply to it. Delete their mail and use a spam blocker to filter out subsequent mailings.
If over time you find that spammers have again discovered your alias... you can create a new one without having to change your real address.
THE PROBLEM WITH AOL EMAIL ACCOUNTS
Read "Why AOL Email Stinks" Etal
Email aliases <you@yourwebsite.com>
will not work in some cases when they are set up as Forwards to redirect
to certain targets. See
http://2358.ca/FAQ.htm#Mail.
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