All Email Addresses for General Public Cease Working

January 1, 2006

NOTICE: Effective immediately, Bravo Technology Center no longer accepts unsolicited email from automated senders or general public. As part of our comprehensive anti-SPAM initiatives, we removed all email links from all 21 of our own web sites and replaced them with links to contact form. All previously published email addresses for public use, such as:
         
will now cease working. Senders to the above 2 previously published addresses will receive an automated notice directing them to use our new Unified Message Center.

For general inquiries, comments and suggestions, or to report a technical problem, submit a message via the contact form at the new Unified Message Center for all our operations.

Use our dropbox service for submitting files.

Active clients and vendors may continue to correspond via appropriate email addresses given out privately. Those are completely not affected.

Note: This practice is consistent with all major corporations with the means and knowledge of an IT department. This "ban" does not affect intranet and extranet sites, such as our Sharepoint Portal and DGY Blog. Pertinent email addresses continue to be posted there.

Background Info

Since mid-2005, spammers have drastically stepped up their efforts in scouring the web and public record databases for email address to launch attack against. Publicly posted email address on web sites, and listings in whois databases are the top of the list.

Our use of a form-based message system for general inquires solves the problem elegantly and provide much better control.  We may implement human-robot test via graphically rendered text in the future if necessary.  The unified message center for all 21 of our web sites also streamline our processes and enable us to provide more efficient service.

History of Bravo Anti-SPAM Initiatives

Since 1999, we had been conducting seminars on Proper Email Management, Policies and Strategies. The emphasis was on holistic spam avoidance through proper user behaviors, best practices/strategies, and aliases rotation/retirement techniques. Filtration is only a last layer, last resort solution.

In early 2002, we launched Operation Incognito.

• We systematically eliminated all webmaster@ accounts.
• Disabled email for admin account (easily guessable by SPAMmers).
• New contact email listed in graphic renditions, requiring visitors to visually copy.

On May 25, 2005. We fired the 2nd shot: Operation Incognito II.

• Remaining email addresses (other than webmaster & admin) removed from webs
• Old accounts for subscriptions, and purchasing dept. deleted, only aliases given out to vendors and publishers.
• web vCard email disguised, requiring minor user intervention before first use
• developed a system to track source of leak for those aliases given out privately. Based on efficient custom issuing of unique email aliases to each entity. Selective blackholes effectively block the leaked/ruined aliases.

January 1, 2006.  Operation Incognito III, the final episode.

• Disabled all email addresses for general public. Must use message center.
• All remaining graphics rendition of email addresses eliminated from webs.
• All public vCard email addresses removed.
• auto-responder notify sender re: account closed, and to use message center.
• steps taken to defuse auto-responder looping and mail-bomb storms.

Our in-house practices serve as examples of how to do it right. These are also our current advocacies to clients. In addition to these active preventive measures, we also deployed a major curtailment measures on October 30, 2006, and stepped up on January 1, 2007.

See also:

• SPAM Prevention
• Catch-All Alias
• Spoofed Email
• Email Fwd, Confidential
• Server-Side Filtering
• Memo on Communications
• The Harm of Multi-Generational Forwards