Leaving your “personal” email address on the web can make you vulnerable not only to spam, but also to Malware.

A lot of spam and MALWARE (but not all) comes from “harvesting” programs that spammers AND MALICIOUS mailers use to “harvest” email addresses left on Internet pages. Some spammers can also harvest addresses from “Forwarded” emails.

So, to eliminate the Internet page source of spam and Malware via your “personal” email address, there are three things you can do:

1) NEVER leave your “personal” email address on the Internet.

Now there are some sites that absolutely INSIST that you leave an email address – like when joining discussion groups, when making a purchase, setting up your profile for your Health Insurance web site, Online banking, etc.

For that requirement, see point #3.

2) On discussion group postings, always “mung” your email address if you want to post it. “Mung” means to disguise it.  (“Mung” comes from “Mash Until No Good” as opposed to “Munge” which applies to passwords and comes from “Modify Until Not Guessed Easily”).

For example, one of my email addresses (see point #3 for why I have more than one) is rbjamie [at] gmail DOT com. Notice that I typed out “at” instead of using the @ symbol and “DOT” instead of the “.” symbol before a domain. That’s “munging”. Most harvesters look for the @ symbol to get email addresses and some even look for the @ symbol associated with a “.” domain, so if you leave out the @ symbol by typing “at”, the harvesters will not identify it.

However, spammers are getting more sophisticated tools, and harvesters may now look for “at” when it’s typed out – which is why I put it in brackets too. But then they may look for “at” in brackets too – it’s a real cat-and-mouse game.

3) This is the Tip that’s Most Important

Get an Internet Email account – such as Yahoo, Gmail (Google), or Hotmail (Microsoft) IN ADDITION to your ISP’s Email account (I call that one your “personal” email). Most of them are free.

For Internet stuff, leave your Internet email address. That way, even if spammers figure out a way to harvest your munged address, spam will only be delivered to your Internet Email address. And some of these IMAP accounts (Web Mail) have excellent spam filters anyway . . . most notably gmail.

It’s like having two snail mailboxes. One is for junk mail only, and the other is for “personal” stuff, like correspondence from family or friends and bills.

Here’s another point on this “two email” strategy. Give your uncontaminated “personal” email address to trusted family members and friends ONLY. And ask them not to forward chain emails and jokes unless they use your Web Mail address. (Actually, forwarding that stuff takes up excessive amounts of bandwidth needlessly, but that’s another topic for another time).