Article: Preventing Spam

Hixus Software is committed to reducing the level of spam (unsolicited email) sent to the online community. Our innovative Hixus Email Address Protector software helps stop your email address being discovered by people who send spam. We have put together this guide to help you understand what spam is and what you can do to help prevent your email address becoming known to spammers (people and companies that send spam) in the first place.

Spam - how do they get my email address?

The most common method used by spammers to obtain your email address is to use automated software called spam bots that search for and extract email addresses published on the Internet.

If you or your business has its own Web site, it is likely that you've published your email address on your site so that people can contact you. Unfortunately, this also results in your email address being "harvested" by spam bots unless you have a good preventative measure in place, such as using Hixus Email Address Protector, which hides your email address from spam bots but displays it for legitimate visitors to your site.

How does Hixus Email Address Protector work?

Unlike standard spam filtering software, which uses a reactive approach by intercepting and deleting spam only after it has been sent to you, Hixus Email Address Protector uses a proactive approach by blocking your email address from being collected for use in spam campaigns in the first place. Hixus Email Address Protector encrypts (encodes) your email address so that it is not visible to most automated spam bots. However, when legitimate visitors access your website, the email address is decrypted into a readable format.

The level of protection offered

Hixus Software undertook a study using ten of the most common spam harvesting tools to evaluate the effectiveness of the protection offered by Hixus Email Address Protector. The study revealed that none of the tools that were tested could harvest email addresses protected by Hixus Email Address Protector.

The tools tested were:

• Atomic Email Hunter v.2.11.0
• Monster-submit/email grabber (online)
• Online Email Grabber Professional v.1.22
• Expert Email Grabber v.1.0
• Fast Email Extractor v.4.5 Pro
• Email catcher& sender v.2.10 /Netemail Pack v.2.10/
• Web Data Extractor (WDE) v.4.0
• Web Mail Miner
• Fast Email Spyder v.1.25
• Target Email Collector v.1.5

Why does the protection work?

The protection offered by Hixus Email Address Protector is effective because the encryption used creates technical difficulties for spam bots to decode your email address. The main reason for this is seed: decoding protected email addresses unnecessarily slows down a spam bot's email address collection process, meaning protected addresses will often be ignored.

High protection levels

For even higher protection, Hixus Email Address Protector also offers text to image conversion of email addresses. Because text contained in such images can not be read by most spam bots, your email address can not be extracted and goes unnoticed.

How to help protect yourself from spam

1. Protect your email address on your website using Hixus Email Address Protector. Click here to buy the program and protect your email address today.
2. Refrain from publishing your email address on newsgroups.
3. Install spam filtering software.