There are two important issues to consider in reducing the amount of spam you get

• Choose your email addresses so that they cannot be easily guessed by spammers.
• Be cautious in how you use your addresses.

If you're getting spam, it's because one or more spammers have either obtained your email address, or guessed it.

How spammers guess at email addresses

Spammers sometimes guess common email addresses, rather than building or buying mail lists. For example, at opendoor.com, we get spam for webmaster, sales, info, etc. Webmaster, sales and info are common email names, and so are easy to guess. Also easy to guess are first names, common last names and common words. Thus, Open Door sees bounced email for names such as aardvark, oranges, tony and jones (@opendoor.com). Another way to guess is to use a common name plus a number, like "jim1", or an initial and a common last name, like "ajones". If you have an easily-guessable email address, you might pick another that is not so easily guessable. If you're not sure if your name is safe, contact us and we'll be happy to render an opinion.

How email addresses are obtained by spammers

Spammers use a number of techniques to gather email addresses, and they all rely on your using your email address in ways that make it available to the public. For example,

• Having your email address displayed on a Web site - Some spammers use special software known as a "Web crawler" to go to Web sites, visit every page on the site, and search each page for text that matches the pattern of an email address (xxx@yyy.com or .org, etc). Ensure that your email address never appears on any Web page. If you belong to an organization that has a directory of members' email addresses on their Web site, request that yours not be displayed.
• Giving your email address to any organization or merchant - Every time you give your email address out, you may risk your address being passed on to spammers, depending on the privacy policy of the organization you give it to. Be very cautious in giving out your private address, and before you give out your address, inquire as to the privacy policy of the entity you're giving your address to. If the entity does not explicitly say that they will not share your email address with others, don't give them your address.
• Providing your email address to Windows users. Yes, that's right, these days many Windows machines are compromised by spammers, and your email address obtained that way. It's unfortunate but true.
• Chat rooms.
• Newsgroup postings.
• Other Web-based discussion postings.
• Inclusion of your email address in email lists that display all recipients - A well-run mail list will not display any actual email addresses in the To or Cc fields of messages they send. The To field should say something like "List-recipient", with no email addresses included. If you're on a list that displays your email address, ask them to fix their list or take you off. Also, be sure your friends and family don't include long lists of email addresses in the To or CC fields (and that you don't as well).

Private and public email addresses

One good general strategy to minimize the impact that spam has on you is to keep private and public addresses.

• Private - Have one address that you give only to friends and family. If you take precautions to keep spammers from discovering this address, you shouldn't receive spam there.
• Public - Have another address that you give to merchants, organizations, etc. and use in online discussion groups. Any of these activities may represent a risk of having your email address discovered.

Unless you need to allow email from the public (as in a business), you won't need to check your public address as frequently as your private address. If you're getting lots of spam, and want a private email address at opendoor.com, contact us.

Summary

• Use private and public email addresses.
• Use a private email address that is not easily guessable, and only use common names in public addresses where necessary (e.g. webmaster, info, etc.).
• Make sure that your private email address never appears on any Web page. If you must have an address on a Web page, use your public address.
• Avoid giving your private email address to any organization or any merchant. If you must give an address, find out their privacy policy first, and then use only your public address, if it all possible.
• Use only your public address in chat rooms, newsgroups and any Web-based online discussion group.