I originally sent this out to my own customers but realized it could benefit others.  Highly consider my advice here. 

There is a big phishing effort going on right now.  Don't fall victim to this. 

The subject line is generally in the form of:

• Website Inquiry or
• Website Advertising Inquiry
• Marketing Inquiry
• Website Partnership

There are others, so be on the look out.   This ploy is used to get you to confirm your e-mail. DO NOT fREPLY TO THESE E-MAILS.

You can research Phishing through this indepth Wikipedia Article: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phishing

If you value the privacy of your e-mail address I suggest you make the following changes in how you use your e-mail.

If you are already far too flooded with spam, your best bet is to start with a fresh e-mail account.  You should all know how to use your Plesk Control Panel now.   In the controls you can add, edit and delete e-mail accounts.  You can also set aliases.

Using an alias is the key to keeping your e-mail box free of spam.  I should say.. Alaises.  Allow me to explain. 

The first step is to create a new e-mail account.  ONLY GIVE THIS E-MAIL ADDRESS TO known contacts and friends.  Lets' give it a name for the sake of this excercise.  The e-mail address is TheRealYou@yourdomain.com.

Now here is how you protect yourself.  After you have now only given your address to friends and colleagues, you will still need to provide e-mail addresses to vendors or web sites you want to use on the Internet.  Here is where most people go wrong.

Do not EVER enter your real e-mail address (our example is TheRealYou@yourdomain.com)  Use an alias instead.  An alias is a phantom or nickname e-mail address mapped to your actual (real) e-mail address.  Wikipedia's definition is OK: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Email_alias

Let's assume you need to provide an e-mail address for either amazon.com or ebay.com or paypal.com.  You would create aliases in the Plesk Control Panel such as these:

• amazon@yourdomain.com
• ebay@yourdomain.com
• paypal@yourdomain.com

Now you can communicate with these vendors without exposing your real e-mail address.    Should any one of these vendors sell or provide your e-mail address to a third party without your permission, you would then return to the control panel and DELETE that alias.  All spam being sent to the exposed address is now eliminated.

You can take short cuts with aliases too, for instance if you want to risk cutting off all your vendors, you could simply create one stand by alias of vendors@yourdomain.com.   Remember, thought deleting an alias given out to more than one Internet vendor or site means all that use it are cut off.  Let your own creativity guide you.

This does mean you as a user must work to maintain your privacy but the benefits are long term and far out weigh the work you must put in.  The work I speak of is this for example:

You visit a site that is offering you free music downloads for life, all you have to do is enter your contact info and e-mail.  We've all been on a form before that requires this information.

Before you complete the form, you open a second browser to your own hosting Control Panel:  YOU SHOULD HAVE THAT PAGE BOOKMARKED.  Login, goto your mail administration area and create an additional e-mail alias.  Return to the form you were first on and list the new alias you just created.  Now your real e-mail is safe from spam.

It goes without saying that you should NOT list ANY e-mail on your web site.  If you use a form, be sure and have one that is spammer safe. A real web design crew will have the talent to have done this for you.