Problem:
Your spam continues to rise in volume. Customers report they are receiving spam emails with your email addresses in the headers. Company policy is not to give email addresses out, yet they are found by spammers.

Cause:
You have unprotected email addresses listed on your website. Spammers are harvesting these emails using bot scanners. These are small, automatically-run applications which scan an entire website for the email structure (Name@Company.com).

Solution:

1. Remove any unnecessary emails from your website. Replace with contact forms, using Javascript or .NET.
   
2. Encode any remaining emails using an HTML encoder application. PlanetMagpie provides one such application free, located here:
   
   PlanetMagpie Email Encoder
   
   This application translates an email address into an HTML-based language format spammers can't harvest. The resulting code is put in place of the email address in the website's HTML link.

NOTE: In order to avoid any chance of spammers harvesting your email by directly looking at your website, change the text of email links to avoid listing the full address. For example, don't put, "Email me at EmployeeQ@CompanyX.com" on the site. Instead, write, "Email Mark Here."

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TechNote Written by: PlanetMagpie W3 Services
September 2, 2008