Protecting your Email Address from Harvesters and Viruses
Email is a great communication tool for your business. However providing your email address on web pages or in web page coding is becoming a problem.
Email Harvesters
Spam mailing lists are now using automated email harvesters to collect email addresses for their lists. These harvesters trawl web pages for anything that looks like an email address and then simply add you to their lists.
Email Viruses/Worms
A related problem is email viruses and worms. One in particular W32.Klez.H appears particularly prevalent. This virus is delivered by email and then searches the host computer for email addresses both in the windows address book and local files. It then sends itself to these addresses and often appears to come from one of them. So if you have a web page containing your email address sitting on somebody's computer (which happens as soon as they view your page) it can be found by viruses like W32.Klez.H. This will result in not only you receiving a contaminated email but other email addresses found on the computer may also be sent an infected email appearing to come from you. This type of virus can make you appear to be the source of virus infected emails; this cannot be good for business.
Initially with our own web sites www.bizpeponline.com and www.softswot.com which target the business market providing a range of business software we specifically made our email contact details accessible to all site visitors from all pages. Now our email address is sitting in 1000's of computers world-wide both in address books and local web files just waiting to be collected by any W32.Klez that comes along.
To address this we have started to remove harvester and virus readable email addresses from our sites by using script and images for email addresses. We also developed form processing software (Form1) that prevents the form delivery email addresses being read by harvesters and viruses. Form1 uses the php scripting language to provide a single file form processor that incorporates your delivery email address in its server side code, not in the web page source code where it can be viewed by anybody; or anything; that reads your web page.
Unlike standard form processing scripts Form1's delivery email address is not displayed in browsers or browser source code and cannot be harvested by spam emailers or viruses. If you view the source code for most standard forms (from the web page go View, Source in Explorer or View, Page Source in Navigator) the recipient email address for the form is displayed. This is not the case with Form1. With Form1 you download the basic script, modify the delivery email address using your text editor, upload Form1 to your server and you have a fully functional form, without the need for additional form processing cgi scripts and protection from anything sinister that wants your email address. If you are concerned about exposing your email addresses you can see Frorm1 in action at www.softswot.com and download the software to set it up on your site.
Current anti-virus software is also valuable investment. We use the Norton Antivirus Live Update system which automatically updates our antivirus software so we are sure our virus protection is always current. And one final point - spam emailers only spam because they get responses.
Additional information on W32.Klez is available from Symantec.
The author David Morcom is the founder of Bizpep, providers of innovative software and practical business solutions. If you would like to learn more visit www.bizpeponline.com where an extensive range of software is available for free download and evaluation.
