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July 01, 2004
Protect Your Email Address
As you may already know, posting your email address anywhere on web is a sure-fire way to increase your spam exponentially. Luckily there are ways to prevent the onslaught. PC Magazine's article "Protect Your E-Mail Address" tells you how to keep the spam at bay when you absolutely, positively need to post your address to a web site.
The article cites a series of experiments conducted by the Center for Democracy and Technology, in 2003. Dozens of new e-mail addresses were created, then used in a variety of ways to mimick real-world use. Ninety-seven per cent of the spam was a result of email addresses posted to the web. Addresses registered at e-commerce sites received little or no spam.
If you must post your email address, what can you do? Several things. Spell out "youremailaddress at domain dot com", put your email address in an image, or use a free encoding service, Hiveware's Enkoder, to name a few.
Comments
That article says things like "make your e-mail address a picture". While that's fine for the majority of people, blind people use screen readers to browse the internet, and these graphics are unusable to them. It's a much better idea to use something like disposable e-mail addresses (spamgourmet.com) or obfuscate your e-mail address in a way that can be used by ALL people (www.mailmask.net).
Posted by: Richard at February 22, 2005 10:44 AM
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