Spam and Hacking is a growing problem and  affects Bridgewebs and its users as much as any other web site.

There are 2 aspects that are considered.

• Keeping email addresses away from the general public
• Ensuring emails sent from Bridgewebs are "Spam Detector" friendly

Security is taken seriously and several modifications have been made to Bridgewebs over time to help combat this "menace"

• Emails from the "Bulk Email" feature are sent individually to the recipients, it doesn't use the "cc" feature, so users or any hacker having access to a particular email account doesn't have access to a list of emails from the club
• Any Database Emails shown publicly on a "Club" web site are shown with an envelope icon and a user has to click twice to obtain an email. This is Human readable, but prevents Spammers "Harvesting" Email addresses
• There is also an option to "protect" emails on the "Member Only" - "Member List" to provide the same Spam check popup box
• Entries on "Contact Us" / "Form" pages are checked for reasonableness and if considered Spam, such as reserved words, suspect hyperlinks, too large are redirected to the Bridgewebs Spam email.
• Entries submitted via the "Contact Us" / "Form" pages generate 2 emails, one to the submitter and one to the club recipient, so that the submitter is unable to get the "Administrators" email.
• Users require an email to view the Member list.
• Passwords for the "Members Only" pages are randomly generated by Bridgewebs to ensure they are sufficiently unique and not something simple that the user might put in.
• All requests to "Join" the Bridgewebs Forum are now manually verified.
• System generated emails have been moved to a specialist Email provider with increased logging, spam validation and protection.
• System generated emails conform to acceptable standards, i.e.. have an "unsubscribe" link

On the "Priority To Do" list is a change to the "Forgotten Password" procedure. This will be changed to a timed "Reset Password" so that the password isn't sent out in an email and the request must be actioned within a certain time e.g.. 24 hours. This will greatly minimize the possibility of a password being "stolen".

One of the adverse consequences of the success of Bridgewebs is that Bridgewebs is now a large site and some tens of thousands of system generated emails are being sent out each month. Many of these Emails will look the same and it is possible that Email Providers may decide they are Spam and send them to a User's "Spam" folder. However large Bridgewebs may be in the Bridge circle, it is an absolute minnow generally and it is difficult to get these things corrected.

System Generated Emails

There are many factors in determining whether an email is Spam.

• Email Account Reputation
• Provision of standard format such as "Unsubscribe" button
• The "From" address matches the Email Server address. This means that ALL emails must come from a Bridgewebs registered domain, currently members@bridgewebsemail.com. This is different to the bridgewebs.com domain to minimize the possibility of bridgeweb.com becoming blacklisted

Received Spam

If you receive emails such as "I am on holiday in Spain and lost my wallet....", PLEASE do not Open, do not Click on any link, do not Reply, just Delete.

If the email has come from your email account have a look at

http://help.yahoo.com