Seasonal Spam

Apologies for neglecting my blog recently, I've just been tied up with turkey and business :) Hope everyone had a lovely holiday -- I know I can't wait for the next!

Speaking of the season, I'm sure a lot of you have noticed an unusual amount of spam. Some of it comes by way of filling out forms on your site as jibberish, to emails about Viagra sent from your very own email account. There's typically a seasonal spike in spam, just as you would receive excess piles of junk mail and catalogs.

The only answer I can give for this is that spammers are capitalizing on the holiday spirit. They'll insert seasonal-oriented keywords into URLs, subject lines, and embedded images. There's more online shoppers these days and it's easier to get through filters with their black hat keyword tricks. According to Symantec's State of Spam report, gift cards, electronics, replica products, and pharmaceuticals were hot items being promoted in these spam messages. Gift cards and electronics were some of the top selling items offered by legitimate marketers, again showing the threat that spammers have on legitimate businesses by risking the quality of the channel.

There's not much you can do but wait out the season, but here are a few suggestions to get through it:

• Make sure your email settings are properly set up. You can alter your email filter options, and enable Spam Assassin and/or AntiVirus protection.
• Install a CAPTCHA on your site forms. A CAPTCHA (Completely Automated Turing Test To Tell Computers and Humans Apart) can prevent spam robots from completing and submitting forms. Learn more about how to install one here: http://www.captcha.net/
• Don't use your real email address to sign up for newsletters, contests, etc. Instead, create a separate account solely for these sign ups (such as Yahoo Mail or G-Mail). Once an email address is in the hands of one spammer, your Inbox is sure to be filled with lots more.
• Watch out for checkboxes. When you do join a network or shop online, tricky little checkboxes can go unnoticed. Pay close attention to phrases like "Yes, I'd like to...."
• Ignore Delivery Failures of messages you did not send. The cause may be a worm or a spammer, and it's probably not on your computer.

While you can't prevent all of it from getting through, these few things should certainly help to cut down on the amount of spam you'll receive through the holiday season.