** Use An Email Form **

Another way to cut down on spam originating from your own website is simply not to display an email at all.

Instead, allow customers and prospects to contact you through a form where they fill in fields, click a button, and your website emails you their message.

A note of caution: make sure form script you use does not keep your email address visible in form code.

If form code contains email address, spam robots can find it even though you don't see it on page.

** Make It Hard To Guess **

Sometimes you'll get unsolicited email because a spammer guessed your email address.

It's not a far stretch to imagine that someone probably has email Jim@yourdomain.com, so spammers will do a "dictionary" attack on common usernames.

One way to defeat this is to place a "dot" (.) in your email address, such as Jim.Edwards@yourdomain.com. The dot makes it virtually impossible for spammers to guess your email address.

-- Jim Edwards is a syndicated newspaper columnist and co-author of an amazing new ebook that will teach you how to use fr^e articles to quickly drive thousands of targeted visitors to your website, affiliate links, or blogs...

-=-=-==-=-=-=-==-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- Need MORE TRAFFIC to your website or affiliate links? "Turn Words Into Traffic" reveals secrets for driving Thousands of NEW visitors to your website or affiliate links... without spending a dime on advertising! Click Here> http://www.the-easy-way.com/traffic.html -=-=-==-=-=-=-==-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

Jim Edwards is a syndicated newspaper columnist and the co-author of an amazing new ebook that will teach you how to use fr^e articles to quickly drive thousands of targeted visitors to your website, affiliate links, or blogs... http://www.the-easy-way.com/traffic.html

As soon as these details have been entered, an error page appears; it tells user that transaction has been unsuccessful, and offers instructions on how to pay for ticket by postal money order. So user may well be fooled twice. He loses his credit card details, putting them right into hands of cyber-crooks, and then loses money, if decides to buy ticket by money order.

Of course, these sites have already been disabled, but who knows whether (or better to say when) other ones will appear again, this time offering all kinds of products.

Malicious websites are especially dangerous. Cybercriminals create them exclusively to execute malicious code on visitors' computers. Sometimes hackers infect legitimate sites with malicious code.

Bad news for blog readers: blogs can be contaminated, too. Since January, Websense Security Labs has discovered hundreds of these "toxic" blogs set by hackers.

When unsuspecting users visit malicious sites, various nasty applications are downloaded and executed on their computers. Unfortunately, more and more often these applications contain keyloggers--software programs for intercepting data.

Keyloggers, as it is clear from name of program, log keystrokes --but that's not all. They capture everything user is doing -- keystrokes, mouse clicks, files opened and closed, sites visited. A little more sophisticated programs of this kind also capture text from windows and make screenshots (record everything displayed on screen) - so information is captured even if user doesn't type anything, just opens views file.

In February and March 2005, Websense Security Labs researched and identified about 8-10 new keylogger variants and more than 100 malicious websites which are hosting these keyloggers EACH WEEK. From November of 2004 through December 2004 these figures were much smaller: 1-2 new keylogger variants and 10-15 new malicious websites per week. There is by all means a disturbing tendency--the number of brand-new keyloggers and malicious website is growing, and growing rapidly.

What a user can do to avoid these sites?

As for phishing, best advice is not to click any links in any email, especially if it claims to be from a bank.

Opening an attachment of a spam message can also trigger execution of malicious program, for example a keylogger or a keylogger-containing Trojan horse.

As for fraudulent websites, maybe buying goods only from trusted vendors will help -- even if it is a bit more expensive.

As for malicious websites... "Malicious websites that host adult entertainment and shopping content can exploit Internet Explorer vulnerabilities to run code remotely without user interaction."(a quote from Websense's report). What can a user do about it? Not much, but avoiding adult sites and buying only from known and trusted online stores will reduce risk.

Hackers also attract traffic to malicious websites by sending a link through spam or spim (the analog of spam for instant messaging (IM). So a good advice never follow links in spam is worth remembering once more.

Alexandra Gamanenko currently works at Raytown Corporation, LLC -- an independent software developing company that provides various solutions for information security.