I ran across a situation again today that prompted me to write this article to benefit those who may not be aware of this problem.

I was using a website builder that automatically put my email address on the page as a mailto: link and didn't protect it. There are several methods to accomplish that, but some people who create these 'ring in the nose' approaches for creating your own website or blog are obviously not aware of it being a problem.

Spam Bots crawl the web every minute looking for these exposed email addresses so they can add them to the next big list they sell as marketing leads. After all, if you have a marketing website, you MUST be a hot prospect for the next big scam to come along, so your email address is valuable, right?

If you create your own website from scratch, search Google for 'hide email address' to get some ideas, but if you use one of the above mentioned website builders try this one. Set up a free Gmail address (or use one from your own domain), but set it on Vacation Mode so it returns an automatic response message explaining you are protecting yourself from spammers and send them to APSense to contact you that way. Use that email address as your mailto:.

Now the spammers can email you at that address all day and you just filter then into the trash! You not only avoid being harassed, but you might even get a few referrals.

See you online!