What really makes me laugh is in body of email it reads, "Would you like to start a home business?" You just told me you went to my site, obviously you would know I ALREADY have a business! In fact, I have four of them so you may want to head back there that way you can learn REAL way to market online.

This last little episode really gave me a good chuckle, I got spammed by some person claiming I requested information (a private email address). So, I reported it to program owner and to autoresponder service that they were using (which is owned by a good friend of mine). The program owner allowed person to state their "case" and forwarded me a copy of their response.

This was their reply - "I'm not certain where I received that email address from. I used to buy email addresses, but I don't do that anymore. I have been marketing now for over two years and NEVER had a spam complaint, so I'm really appalled at this acusation. I have had 4 of my ISP accounts shut down, because maybe people were offended by ad copy. The person who sent you this complaint MUST be someone I have previously been in contact with because that is only way to get on my list."

Sheesh, I wonder WHO LIAR is in this case? There's nothing like a contradictive statement to hang yourself out to dry. In this case person should have just came right out and said, "Yeah, I harvested her email address", instead of talking in circles and digging themselves into a DEEPER hole. The great Homer Simpson once said, "DOH"! (but hey at least he admits to doing something STUPID!)

Now, just because you've scrambled your email address, that doesn't keep all spammers from sending email to you. Some will just use something like *anything*@yourdomain.com because they understand that most websites have email forwarding. Anything that is emailed to your domain will be forwarded to an email address you specified.

You never have to see this email if you forward it to another email address that automatically deletes it.

You will need a free email account that offers some simple anti-spam features to use as your *dump account*.

You must be able to designate email addresses from which you will not accept any email. You may already have an account that can handle it. If not, look into Mail.com or Lycos.com.

Then make your free email dump account default forwarding address in your website's email handler. Go to your free email account and set it to reject all mail received from YOUR domain.

Then have email that is sent to your published email addresses (those you have scrambled on your site) forwarded to your normal forwarding address. Or, set them up as individual POP accounts if your hosting service offers this feature.

Now you will receive email from your website visitors who actually read your email address on your website and all other email will be deleted.

This is a very effective way to get rid of most spam that is generated from your domain. It won't eliminate all of it. The volume of spam that I was receiving decreased by 90-95% after I made these changes.

This tactic will work for sites that have been online with an unprotected email address too. Change email address on your site to a different scrambled address. Forward all email that is sent to your old posted address to your dump account.

If you've been using your primary email address on your site, you'll need to notify everyone that your email address has changed. This makes it more difficult, but worth effort if you're being slammed with spam.