More spam on a .com site??

[Lulu]

Hi

 

I posted a note on here a while back about the pro's and con's of .org vs .com etc and got some really helpful replies. Off the back of it, our group decided on a .com domain name. The hosting service also offers .com email addresses. However, I've been told that .com addresses are more prone to spam emails. I wondered what other people's experience of this was, and whether we should go for .org after all.

[newseed]

You can have both domain if you want (.com and .org). Use the .com for website and the .org for emails. Of course both required to be hosted but odds are that whatever hosting you use will allow more than one domain to be hosted without additional cost.

 

For me, my spam is a very minimum. Spam emails are going to be a part of life but it doesn't mean you have to put up with 50-60 spam emails a day. In most cases it's the email account holder that causes most spams in which they were not careful about how they used their email address.

 

Overwall, there is no way to completely stop spam but you can keep to a mininum. Most host will offer email spam protection that will stop spam before it gets to your inbox. I find that using a dot in your email address also help but not necessarily fool proof. (i.e. john.doe@mydomain.com).

 

If you use an online email form make sure you have a good one that prevents spams. Also it probably a really good idean to have a good captcha applied to the form as well where only a real human can enter in security code correctly.

[administrator]

From my experience since the beginnings of spam (back in the 1990's) .. whether you have a .com or .org, it makes no difference in terms of spam. So in other words, the domain extension has no impact.

 

To protect against spam, you need to:

 

1. use spam filters

2. hide email addresses from spam bots

3. make sure the email server is not set to catch all for emails. Meaning, for the mail server to accept email, there has to be a real email address.

 

I hope that helps,

 

Stefan

[Lulu]

Thanks for your post, Eddie. I'll bear in mind your points when I set up the contact form etc. I have used underscores on my email account historically but think dots are probably easier for users.

 

I read somewhere recently that around 80% of emails are spam ... astonishing!!

Edited January 29, 2012 by Lulu

[Lulu]

Thanks, Stefan. Re your point (2), how do I hide email addresses from spam bots - is it by using a contact form, for example?

 

I was thinking of having a contact form, but also putting the email address on the page in case people didn't want to use the form. Also, I thought contact forms could only be used with certain email addresses such as hotmail etc (or perhaps that the more basic ones)?

 

If you include the email address on the page, does it help prevent spam if you use brackets, eg

my.email[at]hotmail.com?

[daddyalfie]

I don't think I am really "pirating" this thread, but here's the question:

 

Do any of the "obfuscation" themes, such as hexadecimal etc, still work?

 

Alfie