Things to check for include:
Do a whois and see if the site is parked!
A parked domain could spell trouble. This will show up as PARK11.SECURESERVER.NET for DNS settings.
Unless this is an alias address such as one used for our directory it could spell problems.
Example: clickforchoice.com will show parked but it's an alias for click4choice.com
clickforchoice.com.  3600  IN  NS  PARK3.SECURESERVER.NET.
clickforchoice.com.  3600  IN  NS  PARK4.SECURESERVER.NET.

Domain ownership is another key. If a domain is listed as owned by an overseas person this maybe a red light.
Much of the spam is coming from China and Russia and in some cases servers for websites are right here in the USA.

Spammers are well organized and use hotmail addresses and other methods to send the offending garbage.
We are now seeing hit and run operations where use of free hosting accounts is used to redirect to a domain less website.
You may have received such an email such as "Click to Advertise Your Site to 3,000,000 Internet Users".
This scheme uses geocities.com as a stepping stone to an IP address ( Domain less website ) which is on a server in China.

Spam is a big business and spammers or scammers will abuse any system they can to reach you.
They will go as far as hacking into servers to gain access to their email system just to send out a few hundred thousand emails.
Most hosting companies will notice the rise in traffic and stop it quickly thus limiting the number of emails sent.
So we can see that they go through much work to send out emails (spam) but they also need to gain email addresses.
This is becoming harder as companies use forms to send out messages.
One method spammers use is the use of BOTS as harvesters. A bot is sent to each site to look for an email address on any page.
The bot then returns all email addresses found to add to the list of addresses to send to.
More recent is the use of code injection to email forms making use of a flaw in email servers commonly known as email form hijacking.
Here an email is sent with a CC address which is normally some hotmail address. Through this method they can do two things.
One, use the website form to send out spam and also grab the email address as a new recipient to their spam list.
A form normally will send an email to the website owner but after the form is hijacked it will CC the owner's address to the spammer.
Newer written email form scripts block such abuse such as our own CW3 email Form Script.
Now we come to the easy way to gain addresses - free submission websites!!!
Many free submission sites do not share or give out these email addresses. Most require users to give email addresses to avoid abuse.
Just as spammers abuse email systems they also abuse listing and classified ad services.
But some new comers to the scene are setting up sites just to harvest email addresses.
This hurts everyone in that legitimate directories or search engines now must content with people using hotmail addresses to list their sites.

We believe that all those listed on our list of search engines and directories are legitimate.
We have had experience with each site and do not add sites we suspect of harvesting email addresses for distribution.
Some sites do email news letters such as Entireweb, Websquash, Gimpsy and a few others but we consider this fair promotion.
We feel it's a fair exchange since they list the owners website Free and they do allow you to opt out.
Some of these news letters are quite informative and warrant not opting out.

In closing I hope this piece helps you to find your way to a better internet experience.