Spam has existed for decades, and it is still a pressing issue for online businesses. The activity of malicious bots can make your website less competitive and visible, compromise your customers’ data and even trigger blacklisting of your IP. Fortunately, all of these issues are preventable. Discover the best practices and tools in our short guide.
Spammers leave email addresses that can put your entire marketing campaign at risk. On СleanTalk, you can check email for spam one by one or in a batch quickly and conveniently. Meanwhile, an anti-spam plugin will prevent malicious activities in real-time. Here are the basics of comprehensive defense.
What Spammers Want
When bots leave comments and fill in every submission form, they cause a massive influx of data. It slows down your website, which hinders the user experience. Your visitors leave due to the inconvenience, so you get fewer conversions and less revenue.
Automatic comments contain links to your competitors’ websites or malicious resources. When users click on them, their sensitive information may be leaked. Companies that follow black-hat SEO strategies use bots to harvest emails for their own campaigns. They may also exploit vulnerabilities in your coding to do this.
Finally, fake addresses, inactive emails, or emails of random users appear on your mailing list. All of these entries are potentially dangerous. Here is why:
- Mail Abuse Prevention systems examine every mass mailing campaign and interpret fake recipients as a sign of spamming.
- When you email users that did not sign up for your messages, they perceive them as spam and report.
- Inactive or fake addresses may function as “spam traps” that help Internet Service Providers spot violators.
How to Check Your Mailing List
Visit an online database website like CleanTalk and enter the suspicious address in the search field. To check the entire list quickly, take advantage of the bulk checking services. Finally, there is an API solution that lets you verify up to 1000 emails per call. Make sure your list is clean before launching your next marketing endeavor.
Check your own email address, domain, and IP as well. Even if your recipients are legit, some users may still have reported you. This may happen when they forget to sign up, cannot find the unsubscribe link, or get too much email in general. Fortunately, one complaint is not enough to blacklist your site, but if 0.01% of users report you, this is bound to happen.
Real-Time Protection
Aside from cleaning the existing list, prevent spammers from hurting your website in real time. One anti-spam plugin is enough to prevent their malicious activities. All visitors will be checked without the use of barriers like CAPTCHA or reCAPTCHA, which are both detrimental to their experience.
