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Preventing Spam on Your Small Business Blog

patrysha | Apr 01, 2010 | 0 comments

Unfortunately, some slime balls on this planet can’t be trusted with email access and they spew out billions of bytes of unwanted, unsolicited garbage every single day. The activities of these low life losers gobbles up the time and resources of individuals and businesses the world over.

It’s insane, but it’s the price of being connected to the abundance of opportunities and information that the web has to offer. If we choose not to participate in online marketing because of the annoyance of spammers and viruses, then the bad guys win.

While we can’t do much to prevent spam. There are several ways to keep it from interfering with our online activities as business owners.

First, you’ll be wanting to protect your email address. Rather than spending tons of time deleting emails, prevent spammers from getting your address by utilizing forms on your website with spam resistant features like Captcha. You can learn how to do so yourself, or hire a VA or full service firm like PK Marketing Solutions to set up a suitable form for your website.

Wherever possible, instead of using your address on social marketing sites, point your links to your contact form. Where that isn’t possible, use a throwaway address like Gmail, Hotmail or yahoo to send mail to.

When doing anything online make sure you create strong passwords. Don’t rely on old favorites or use the same one in multiple places. You are really setting yourself up for trouble if there ever is a breach in security in any of the sites you frequent or services you are signed up for. Yes, it’s a pain to remember a lot of passwords. But there are programs out there that can make that easier to manage too. There are plenty of articles online about how to make your password strong. Find them and follow the guidelines.

Finally, make sure you use a strong protection on your blog and websites (if you use a blog CMS style rather than strictly blog style…which is what I tend to specialize in and prefer for small business websites). There are many plug ins available for WordPress, Joomla and the other popular CMS systems that it should not be to difficult to find one that suits you. I can only really make recommendations for WordPress as that is what I work with most.

These tips should help you remain spam free.

However, if any should manage to slip through, you will want to avoid opening them. Make sure you only open your email online. Don’t download anything to your own computer until you’ve had a chance to review it. Don’t open anything that seems suspicious. Avoid opening anything with an attachment that you aren’t expecting – even if it comes from someone that you do know. Check with them through a separate reply before you open anything with an attachment. Avoid opening anything with an obviously spammy subject line.

Most online email services do come with fairly efficient junk mail filters. There are occasional exceptions and sometimes an overzealous filter can block legitimate emails, but quick scans once a day can help you catch those. Depending on your email volume, you may be able to stretch the scan to once a week.

Hope this helps you prevent spam from interfering with your business. If you have more questions about spam, please leave a comment below and I will try to fill in with what knowledge I do have, but please be aware that I am not a spam specialist. My knowledge is just based on the things I have picked up through the past 13 years online…with minimal spam and virus issues in a family that has one computer per person.