4 Ways to Protect Your Email from Spammers

There are so called email harvesters that glean the internet for email addresses. Once, your email is "harvested", then expect spammers to spam your mailbox with anything from free download indian and pakistani scandal clips to phishing email messages. While it helps that the two popular webmails gmail and yahoo have built in spam blockers, it is inevitable that phishing and hoax mails can get through your inbox.

So how do your protect your email address from spammers and email harvesters?

1. Avoid exposing your email address. The best way to protect your email address from spammers is to avoid displaying your email address especially in your blogs or websites but in case you feel obliged, the following may help:

2. Display your email as an image. Instead of displaying your email as text, use an image instead. Humans can read this, robot email harvesters won't.

3. Use an alternative format when displaying your email as text. E.g mail(@)yourmail.com.

4. Use a captcha program. Captcha (Completely Automated Turing Test To Tell Computers and Humans Apart) can now be used to protect your email. The reCAPTCHA Mailhide for example, requires people to solve a reCAPTCHA before they will be able to view your email address.