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Sitemap1.7. Spam-blocking
Most users of the Internet is familiar with spam, especially in relation to e-mails. In short, spam is unencouraged commercial messages, or attempts to sell you something. Besides e-mail spam in your inbox, spam-robots attempts to take advantage of your website for spam purposes. Both with regards to e-mails sent from the website, as well as user-generated content from e.g. the blog-module. The spam-robots will leave messages for you, your customers and the search engines. It is illegal to generate spam, but unfortunately it is mostly impossible to locate the persons behind. For this reason, HostedCMS is doing everything in our power to fight spam, which includes a continuous expansion of the system's spam-blockings. I the following section, the various types of spam; what we do to prevent the; and what you can do yourself, is described.
Spam content on your website (blog, forum etc.)
Spam-robots will alwaus attempt to generate content on your website through e.g. the comments on the blog-module. It is therefore imperative to have the spam-check activated under SETTINGS. Thespam-check is an automatically generated box, in which the user is asked to fill in two words from a picture. It is not necessary to type in both words correct. An example is shown below.
Few intelligent spam-robots are capable of reading the box above. The box will however also compare the request to a joint IP-database that registers spam-robots from all over the world. Any IP-address registrered in this database will be rejected.
Also, HostedCMS include it's own built-in spam-blockings. Every week new spam-robots are registered by HostedCMS's IP-filtre. The registration occurs in relations to a set of rules set up by HostedCMS, which are continously expanded as the spam-robots evolves.
Spam e-mails in your inbox.
Spam-robots are always on the lookout for new e-mail addresses for their database. As soon as your e-mail adress in registrered by spam-robot, there is no opt-out possibility. Most professionals agree that it is impossible to conceil your e-mail adress completely online. However, if you want to hide it on your website, you can activate the spam-bloging under SETTINGS. The spam-blocking converts your e-mail adress into an image, which is unreadable for the spam-robots. Remember to choose a textcolour for the spam-blocking that matches your website.
Even if your e-mail adress is registrered by a spam-robot, it is not too late to activate the spam-check. This will ensure that you allow even more spam-robots to attain it. Also, it is important to be careful about where you publish your e-mail adress online. By searching on Google, you can see the pages on which your e-mail adress is registrered.
How is spam blocked from your inbox? Recent versions of e-mail programs e.g. Outlook, are capable of discarding spam to 'junk mail'. Online e-mail services like Gmail, Hotmail and Hosted Exchange have the same capability. Also, it is important to have an anti-virus programme, which typically discard both spam and other malicious e-mails.
If your e-mail programme is out of date, we recommend that you upgrade it - or implement one of the spam discarding programmes that can be found by typing "anti spam" into Google.
Spam e-mails from your website (contact forms, newsletter sign-up etc.)
Spam-robots will attempt to fill-in the forms available on your website. This could for instance be a contact form, newsletter sign-up or the like. As in the case of blocking spam-content, it is important that you activate spam-check under SETTINGS. Read the chapter "spam content on your website" to get a description of the function, as well as the initiatives conducted by HostedCMS to prevent spam e-mails from your website.