How to Safely Post Your Email Addresses Online
by Magus Perde
Just how do you display an email address on a website or in a forum post and make it completely invisible to spam bots? This is a question that I have pondered over for quite some time, in fact probably two or three weeks now, but I have two answers that will cater for all situations.
The first is simple. Never, ever, ever enter your email address into any site for any reason. This answer, whilst at first glance possibly seeming trite and contrived, is actually valid even if we all know it is probably totally impractical. It does however point up nicely that we shouldn’t just enter an email address just because we have been asked for it.
What we should be doing is looking to see if an email address is a REQUIREMENT to continue or complete the process we are currently engaged in but, even before that stage, we should be asking ourselves do I need to do this, do I want to do this, do I want to give my email address here? If the answers are yes then it is a choice out of your hands and you must give your email address.
What I really want to make clear is that there is indeed quite often a choice in these things and only giving your email address (even a scratch one that you can dump later if need be) where you absolutely have to is a smart thing to do because if we all did that it would reduce the working stock of addresses that spammers can use.
The second answer then is one that is probably of most use day to day and is one that is 100% guaranteed to keep your email address safe. Create a graphic that measures 220 x 16. Into that graphic simply type your email address. Save the graphic as a transparent gif and upload it to your web space. Don’t have any web space? Go get a free account and upload it there.
Now, any time you need to post your email address in a forum or somewhere similar, just include a link to your graphic instead. The absolute beauty of this method is that if your email address changes, you only need to update the graphic and any post you’ve ever made on any site or forum is instantly updated as well. Of course, the main reason for doing this is that I can guarantee 100% that your email address will be safe from spam bots!
This is an excerpt from a pretty long article by Magus Perde about spambots which was forwarded to me by Glenn Parker - thanks Glenn! I posted the complete article on the forum:
http://www.letsmakesoftware.com/forum/viewtopic.php?p=1822#1822
May 17th, 2006 at 6:35 pm
This is an easy one. There are two solutions, depending on your need . . .
If you want to post your address where people can see it, but not be read by a bot, change the @ to AT and folks can figure it out.
If you are signing up for something that will send you a one-time registration message and you don’t want to risk having them sell your name, use a throwaway address that doesn’t require registration. This is mailinator.com. You can use your_name@sogetthis.com or your_name@mailinator.com. The incoming mail creates a new inbox, so you don’t have to register to get it. Just go to mailinator.com, type in your name, and see if you have any mail. No password needed. No graphics or attachments are delivered — just text and links. Read your message, and a few hours later it is automatically deleted. Don’t choose a common name — JOE will get read by a dozen other people before you get there.
If you want to have some fun, click on the Spam Map icon and you’ll see, in real time, the creeps who are actually sending spam right at that moment. Sadly, my guess is that most of them are newbies who still haven’t figured out how to patch their infected PC, and they’ve been taken over by the real spammer to do his dirty work for him.
May 18th, 2006 at 7:51 am
As a matter of fact, changing the wording of the email address like you describe in your comment, no longer seems to work either.
Read the complete article about spambots - it explains the filters which can be set manually by the address harvesters which allow to capture these kind of encrypted addresses as well now.
http://www.letsmakesoftware.com/forum/viewtopic.php?p=1822#1822
Perde describes a couple of no longer working strategies that people use to keep their address hidden from the spambots - changing @ to AT is one of them…