Creating Aliases

The technique of creating aliases is fundamental to the success of the Spam Plan - it is at this point that most people will kick themselves for not thinking of such an obvious, but brilliantly simple idea!

From now on, instead of giving out your ISP address to everybody, you create a unique alias at your domain for each contact.

For example, if you have an account at amazon.com, you would give them the address amazon@yourdomain.com. Your bank would have the address bank@yourdomain.com and so on.

Your existing contacts will need to be notified of the new address that they must use - which is a little time consuming - but it's something that you only have to do once and then you are spam free forever!

Aliases To Avoid

When you are creating aliases, it is important to avoid certain generic names, such as email@yourdomain.com or info@yourdomain.com

This is because spammers know that most people will create these common aliases at their domain - so they will just 'guess' what your address is, knowing that maybe 50% will get through.

Email Forwarding

To receive the email which is sent to all of the unique aliases you have created, you simply need to go into your control panel and set all aliases to be forwarded to your main ISP address.

Your ISP (Internet Service Provider), is the company you sign up with to gain access to the internet - eg, if your ISP is AOL, they will give you an email address such as 'yourusername@aol.com'.

When you check your email using Outlook Express or some other email client, it is this ISP email address that most people set their computer to log into

Why do this?

Every time you give out an email address, you are taking a chance that it will end up on a spammers mailing list

Assigning a unique address to all of your contacts doesn't lessen this risk, but it gives you a way to fight back when it happens.

If a spam email arrives in the future, you will be able to tell who sold your address, because they were the only person who was ever given it. A simple, but very clever trick!

More importantly, you will also be able to cancel their address and stop the spam instantly, without affecting any of your genuine contacts - this is what makes the Spam Plan so effective!

Hopefully, you are now starting to realise why this is much better than having one email address, which you give out to everybody.

Catch All or Default Address

Any email that arrives which is not addressed to one of the aliases you have created will be classed as your 'catch all' or default address.

It is safe to say that pretty much 100% of email that is addressed to a non existant alias will be spam - so it should be dumped!

To dump this spam, you set your catch all or default address to be forwarded to an address often referred to as the 'blackhole'. Any email sent here will never be seen by you.

Alternatively, you can set your default address, so that it 'bounces' a permanent error message back to the spammers - this way they know the address is not valid and will probably take it off their list.

ISP Address Security

It is vitally important to stress that your ISP email address should NEVER be given to ANYONE! It's only function is to receive messages that have been forwarded from the aliases you have created.

If your existing ISP email address is receiving spam at the moment, you will need to get a new one.

You are now almost there, you simply need to go to step 4, which will give you a few final tips on how to enjoy a spam free life.

Step 4
A spam free life!

Spam