Another spam & websites question

[jeaniesa]

Thanks for all of the discusison in my previous thread on spam generated by e-mail addresses included in websites. I gained a ton of information which I will be using on my site - attempting to "do it right the first time."

Unfortunately, the reason that discussion arose still exists: the website of the organization I volunteer for has generated TONS of spam. The address the spam is being sent to is actually an alias which is forwarded to five personal addresses. We are in the process of switching hosting providers and I am hoping to solve the spam issue while we're at it. Here's what I'm thinking of doing:

1. Set up a different alias as the organization's e-mail.
2. Use one of the encryption techniques mentioned in my previous thread to "protect" it on the website.
3. Send an e-mail to our mailing list informing people to look on the new webpage and make changes in their address books.

Now, here's where I need advice. It is very likely that some people have our old address in their address books and are not on our mailing list. I was thinking that I could set up an auto-responder for the old address on our new host with a pointer to the webpage with the new address. Then have the e-mail forwarded to a "fake" address (like [email protected]) which would then bounce back to the sender as invalid. However, would spammers take a look at the auto-response and then go look for the new (valid) address on our site or not? I'd like to point "real" people to the new address if at all possible without automatically setting up another spam-fest. (Right now we get 50-75 spams for every "real" request for info.)

Should I try to accomodate those "real people" who send a request to the old address, or will that just start the spam all over again at the new address? Any advice would be greatly appreciated!!

If anything isn't clear, please ask and I'll try to clarify.

Thanks, Jeanie

[winwintoo]

Hi Jeannie - it all seems like a lot of work doesn't it?? I've had good success with the "bounce" feature in my email package that comes with Mac OSX. The mail is left on the server so I can direct it to be sent back without ever downloading it. In a very short time, the spam has gone from 100+ a day to less than 10.

I know there are PC mail packages that offer the ability to bounce mail too. Is it possible that your new ISP and help you deal with spam?? Sometimes they have "black lists" that they can use.

Good luck, Margaret

[jeaniesa]

Margaret,
The problem with the bounce feature is that it would show my personal address, not the original alias that the mail was sent to. That's been my problem all along. Even if I were to bounce the mail, it is bounced from my ISP, not from the webserver.

I did look at the "solutions for spam" that the host provider lists in their knowledge base and it is the same stuff that we've already discussed elsewhere in this forum. Nothing new. There is a "filter" cabability, but that would require that I manually add every address that is sending spam. Since I already do that in Outlook and still get 5+ new ones every day, I don't think that's a good answer.

I know that I could use MailWasher, but that doesn't help the other four people unless they were to install it as well. I'm not sure that's an answer b/c some of them barely know how to turn on a computer - and most of them use multiple computers b/c they travel all the time, so MailWasher isn't a good solution for them.

Sigh...

Jeanie

[winwintoo]

This won't help solve your problem, but it might cheer you up while you're puzzling over it.

Take care Margaret

[jeaniesa]

Thanks Margaret. I've seen it before, but it still makes me laugh!

Now, if I could just figure out how to download that flash file and attach it to an auto-responder to send to everyone who sends me spam!

Jeanie