Website Design - Privacy Protection

Building in protection from snoopers, spammers, junk mail, telephone sales and identity theft.

Every hour of the day, spammers and marketing organisations are mining the internet for personal data that is used for email spam, unsolicited junk mail, telephone sales and even identity theft. This data usually ends up on a database, CD or is sold to the highest bidder.

Once you have your own website, you are potentially exposed to these risks through your email address, domain name registration, and personal information that you reveal about yourself.

We draw these risks to the attention of our website clients and implement provisions at the website design stage to help protect them. Once the spam, or junk mail starts, it can be very difficult to eradicate.

Protecting your email address from spam bots

Your web site will need an email address so that visitors and customers can contact you. However, your email address can also be harvested by spam bots (short for robot), which can lead to a growing amount of email spam that you receive in your inbox.

There is no 100% foolproof way to protect your web site from malicious spam bots without a significant reduction in website functionality. However, there are measures that can be taken that will significantly reduce the amount of spam mail that you may receive.

When designing a website, we encode your email address so that it cannot be harvested by the majority of robots, yet appears to look normal to visitors.

Website forms can also be designed to protect you from malicious bots by ensuring that they can only be completed by a human being. We can also help you identify the Internet Service Provider of persistent malicious visitors and take steps to ban them from entering your web site completely.

Identity Theft

Once you start to receive spam mail, you may receive some that appears to come from your bank asking for personal information. The email may look very convincing with the graphic style of the bank, or perhaps just text warning you of a security upgrade, or that your account will be closed if you do not respond.

These fraudulent emails are an attempt to 'fish' for your personal information, and this type of scam is known as Phishing. Rarely will the fraudsters know your bank but they send so many emails that it is only a matter of time before you receive one that purportedly comes from your bank.

The email will ask you to confirm your details through a form, or perhaps a log-in routine. The details you submit will be added to the phisher's database, which can then be used to access your account directly.

Banks will never send you emails asking you to disclose PIN numbers, passwords or other personal information or which link to a page that asks you for this kind of information. If you click on a link in an email that takes you to a page that requires a password or personal information, it is very likely to be a scam.

If you receive a suspicious looking email, delete it without opening it. This caution should apply to all unexpected emails with links, or attachments.

Most banks provide warnings about internet fraud, email scams and intrusion from hackers, and advise that they will never request your security details by email or telephone. If in doubt, visit the website address which you know to belong to your bank, or contact them directly by telephone to authenticate the request. Many banks also provide advice on how you can protect yourself against online fraud.

Protecting you from spammers, junk mail and telephone marketers.

When you register a domain name, your personal information is available on the Internet for anyone to see, including spammers, identity thieves or telemarketers. The domain name database is constantly being mined, not only for email spam, but names, addresses and telephone numbers, which can also be used for unsolicited junk mail and telephone sales.

Private Registration
When registering a domain name, it is cheap and easy to purchase a private registration so that your details are out of the public eye and away from spammers, junk mail, telephone marketers and fraudsters.

Before using a private registration service, make sure that you will retain control over the domain name.