The following article is rather self-indulgent and anecdotal. However, just substitute YOU for I/me, and you're going to get something out of it. I promise!

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I'm in no mood to determine an actual count, but I feel comfortable in guessing that I receive something in the department of 5,000-10000 pieces of unwanted email each month. Because I am in business, I cannot take the easy way out with spam. I have to screen it - and by that I mean with my own eyes.

I also figure it takes approximately 1 second of my life per spam message. When I do the math, this means I spend at least, 16 hours a year dealing with spam - at the VERY least, if you don't taken things into consideration like, oh, WRITING about spam! ;)

The truth is, that time estimate is higher, I'm sure. First of all, I assumed I *only* have to deal with 5,000 pieces per month. But since they come in at a general rate of at least 200, per day, I'm being generous to my spammers. Also, this doesn't account for times when, for example, I really have to LOOK at a piece of spam before I determine is really IS spam. Or when I set up rules and filters. Or when I block certain addresses on my email server. Or when I experiment with "new and improved ways" to deal with spam. Or when clients call me for a few free, friendly words of advice on the subject.

In all honesty, I probably lose an entire work week each year - with no pay. And it's not exactly a vacation.

How did I let it get so bad? Well, for one thing, I've had the address for a long time - back when EVERYONE stuck their emails right out there. To make matters 1000 times worse, however, I worked with a programmer who thought it would be helpful to embed my primary business address in every page of CCD Realty One, a web site package used by quite a few offices, brokers and agents. In essence, my address appeared in literally thousands of web pages.

Anyway, if you're a person whose email address(es) is/are only used for friends, family and a select few online things (e.g. eBay, PayPal, online banking, etc.), you're lucky. There is a very quick and immediate solution to your spam problem, should it be out of control, and after the next paragraph, you may be excused. The rest of the class (those whose email addresses are used in business), will have to stay to learn the long and painstaking process of transitioning to new, safe email addresses, without losing customers, and how to deal with spam in the meantime.

If you have an address which would not hurt to let go then, by all means, let it go! First, set up a new address. Next, alert your friends and family of the change, edit any important accounts associated with that address, and then dump it. Don't just ignore it. If not deleted, it will still collect mail, and your ISP isn't going to collect it forever, and you may be blocked from receiving ANY mail because you "filled 'er up." You must make sure that the account no longer exists, and is, therefore, unable to retrieve mail at all. Senders will receive an error message (if they use real reply-to addresses at all), and that's that. THEN, keep the address safe. Don't post it anywhere on the web. Don't use it on questionable sites* (have a throwaway Hotmail or Gmail address for that kind of thing.) Avoid every possibility of having your name thrown on a list for sale. Ok, you're done. It's almost impossible to be 100% spam free. But deleting one or two a day is no big deal. When it gets over 100, it's time for a change.

As for the rest of us, parting with a heavily spammed, yet important, address is no easy task. You definitely have to wean yourself away from it and, by all means, go ahead and implement a new address right away. It can't be a substitute, per se. You still have to keep tabs on the old address. But you're going to be VERY careful with this one. If you work for any companies (e.g. real estate offices) which unsafely publish their agents' addresses...oh, and trust me, I've seen real estate board sites which just give away the farm...well, then, you may just be up the creek. However, I also think that anyone in any business who may well work on his or her own one day should have his or her own site and associated email address and again - be VERY CAREFUL with it.

First of all, you simply cannot use the simple HTML method of including your email address in a page. There are very easy-to-get and use programs which any of us could run to "crawl" the web for email addresses. These "spam bots" comb through the source code of your page. Once you're picked up, the damage is done. That one spam bot may be making a list for hundreds of unwanted messages linking to hundreds of fly-by-night sites.

To include a direct email link in a web page, you need a special script to fool the spam bots. There's quite a few of them out there. Unfortunately, spammers will catch on and adapt, at which point we will readapt, etc. Or, you can use a contact form - a smartly written form which avoids embedding your email in the source code of the rendered web page.

The basic truth is that spam is here. And you're gonna get some. The best you can do is minimize it. I was dismayed to see, while logged into my PayPal business account, that they published my problematic email address in my profile. No obfuscation. It's both spelled out on the page and embedded in the code.

Anyway, your long-term goal is to get to the day where you can comfortably delete that spam-overloaded address and move on. The timetable for this really depends on how much advertising you have out there which includes the bad address and how much of a shelf-life the advertising may have. People should still be able to contact you via phone and/or through your web site, but sometimes one roadblock is enough to make a customer move on.

To purchase customized obfuscation javascript(s) to hide your email address from spam bots, click the button below. You will receive a text file for each address for which you want obfuscated. This is custom code, not found on script sites throughout the Internet. I actually tested the code (again), before finishing the sentence, using Lencom's "Fast Email Extractor," and it passed with flying colors - even though the email address is literally spelled out on the page.

Just like this:



See? I'm not afraid. :) If you can't figure it out yourself, then by all means, click the button. You'll receive your obfuscated, ready-to-paste code within 24 hours. Please make sure you specify which address is to RECEIVE the code, while being very careful in typing or pasting the address(es) you wish to protect.

Stay tuned for more information on how to make lighter work of the often necessary task of combing through spam.