Junk mails are increasing in number day by day. Their only aim is to successfully transmit a virus to a system. Now you would wonder about the relevance of a virus to web development. Well the fact of the matter is virus writers are becoming smarter. This particular virus known as SirCam actually searches cached Web pages for email addresses. It has a mail server inside of it, which starts spamming to the located email addresses. However, in this case these spam are not irritating advertisements but viruses.
Well it is said that all problems have solutions, so it implies here too. There are certain methodologies by which you can protect yourself from these spam viruses.
- Anti-spam messages are not recognized by spambot or virus. They can however, be easily understood by the person receiving the mail. Add words which the person would recognize should be removed to your email address in the mailto field:
For example: html*DELETETHISPART*.xyz@abc.com
The biggest shortcoming is that most of the users do not pay attention to the email addresses
when they are clicking on the mailto link and these mails get deleted if they get a bounce back message.
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Do not add your email address on your web site. This is the most efficient method of preventing from receiving any virus spam. Have a feedback web form which the visitors to your site can fill in to get any information and make use of a CGI to send mails. The CGI should store your email addresses within itself. The CGI doesn't get cached by a virs or spambot. However the drawback of the web form is that most of the visitors don't like to fill them.
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Another way of fooling these viruses and spambots is to convert the email addresses into images. Images can not be indexed by viruses and spambots. However do not add your email address in the alt text. The biggest shortcoming is that the email address images can not be used in a mailto tag. Your customers will have to write the email address themselves which might cause typographical errors.
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Use a Java script to write your email address. This way you can cover your email address from viruses and spambots but your customers can do a mailto linking. The short coming over here is that most of the surfers have their Java script turned off for safety measures.
It is advisable for companies to get antivirus software. And the ones who already have it, it is recommended to update it on regular basis.
This article has been compiled by the content development team at Pegasus InfoCorp which pulls subject matter specialists from different work domains. They can be contacted through the Pegasus InfoCorp website at info@pegasusinfocorp.com. Pegasus InfoCorp is an India based web design, web development and online/ offline software development company. Please visit http://www.pegasusinfocorp.com to read more articles and know more about us!
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