Are you using an e-mail address for your business that people can easily get?  Is it listed off your web page? Perhaps you've gone a step further and used a bit of javascript to obsfucate it so that bots can't crawl and find that link?  Think that's enough?

Well, think again...

I just received a link spam e-mail today that wanted me to exchange links for my site: index-it.net. Oddly enough, I don't own that domain. So my first thought was - COOL - a new form of spam and this one is truly evil.  I could register a new domain and put someone else's contact info in that domain.  Wouldn't be hard to do and would cost me less than a dollar.

So why would I want to do something like that?

Well, let's assume for a moment that I'm a really evil black hat fellow and one of my competitors is outperforming me. I happen across this article that tells me that in 2001 (a long time ago in internet years) people spent an hour of every day with irrelevant e-mails.  And these were e-mails that were work related! What if I could increase that number to, oh, say TWO HOURS!  And what if it only took me less than 30 minutes to do this?

Score! I've got an evil-henchmen-type-of-plan all setup now.

Here's what I can do...assuming, again that I'm a really evil black hat fellow...

1. Go register two domains.  Make sure that I can get mail forwarding with the first.
2. Use my contact info on both domains initially.
3. Go make a post on usenet using the first domain.
4. Sign up for a few article distribution lists.  These have lots of e-mails sent out every day!
5. Sign up for one FFA list or three if you've got the time.
6. Thus far, all of the e-mail has been directed to the first domain.  Check that e-mail, verify that you really want the e-mail sent to you and change it so that forwarding is now going to the second domain.
7. Change the second domain contact info so that e-mails now go to the competitor.

Voila!  You're now wasting lots of their time by trying to deal with the flood of crap that they're going to receive. Of course, I wouldn't do that since I'm not a really evil black hat right? :)

Avoiding this type of spam is actually rather trivial. All you need to do is make sure that your e-mail address is not publically avaiable.  Yes, that even means your support e-mail address. Of course, just removing your e-mail address from your site isn't going to make you very popular when people want support. So I would recommend using a page like this so that people can still contact you.

A support desk system of some type would be vastly helpful - not only to avoid the e-mail spam but also in communicating with your customers.  That, however, is a topic for another discussion.

G-Man

P.S.  If you know my e-mail address don't be evil like me :)