Why Wait Webs

Today, many people are simply reserved to the idea of receiving anywhere from 20 to 1000 spam email messages every day. Some deal with it by filtering their email to stop spam, but in my experience they will also lose at least some of their actual email as a result of this, even with the best filters. Others have simply given in, and spend a half hour or more every single day just hitting that delete button to get rid of their spam emails.

While it is very difficult, if not impossible, to get your email address off of these spam lists once you are on them, you can stop email spam for the most part by being careful with your email address from the beginning. If you have a new email address or an address that receives very little Spam, following these guidelines will help you keep it that way:

• Don’t make purchases from companies you do not trust. - Many companies build their lists by purchasing emails from other companies who have sold something to that individual.
• Stay far away from websites that offer free iPads or other up-scale electronics in exchange for your email address, recruitment, or signing up for offers. They are not always scams (although that often is the case), but they do make their money by selling your email address. This is the single fastest way to get signed up to literally hundreds of spam lists. If you absolutely must participate in one of these, I highly advise using a secondary or “throw-away” email address.
• Avoid signing up for free email newsletters, unless you are genuinely interested in the content. Some will tempt you with a free offer, and there is nothing wrong with that if you are interested, but sometimes they can be difficult to get back off.
• Do not list your email on any website. Ideally, use a web form, so that no one can find your email address from the site. But if you feel it is necessary to include an actual email address, you should use one separate from your normal work and use an image instead of text so that spam robots will not pick it up as quickly. I speak more on the details of this in How to Publish Your Email Address.

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A lot of people put their email address on their website, either as plain text, or as a link to their email address which will open the user’s default email client with the “To:” field automatically filled out. And why shouldn’t they? That’s what email addresses are for, right? To give to people who want to contact you. While this worked great several years ago, one thing has made this a very bad idea on the web today:

Spam.

Spam ruins everything, doesn’t it? These days, many spammers employ robots that crawl the web, going from site to site looking for email addresses to put on their list. These spambots are so prevalent now that putting your email address on the web for all to see is like sending an email to all the spammers that says “please send me all your offers!” But what are we supposed to do? Here are a few solutions that will allow people to email you with a greatly decreased risk of being placed on everyone and their brother’s spam list.

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With this article, I am going to attempt to convince you to stop using Internet Explorer for web browsing on a day-to-day basis. I will start with a brief history of the Internet, just to get you familiarized with the subject if you aren’t already. Then I will move on to the 5 reasons you should switch away from the most popular web browser, Internet Explorer. After that, I will introduce you to my favorite alternatives to Internet Explorer and show you how easy it is to switch (you won’t lose all your favorites!). Well, let’s get going!

A Brief History

I will try to keep this as brief as I know how, since I could easily go into A LOT of detail about it! If you’re interested in reading more in-depth, you should definitely check out this great article: History of the Web Standards Project at WebStandards.org.

The two most popular web browsers at the beginning of the world wide web.

A web browser is what you use to view the world wide web. In the early days of the web, there were two vastly different web browsers duking it out for supremacy: Internet Explorer and Netscape Navigator (logos pictured to the right). Each browser was developed completely independently of the other, and as such, the technologies were complex and wildly varying. Pages rarely, if ever, looked the same in both browsers, and as a result the web as a whole was made a less compatible, less accessible, and generally less fun place to be.

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