Many bloggers go out of their way to mask their email address on websites to prevent “robots” from harvesting them for inbound spam purposes–Chris Brogan types his out (blog at chrisbrogan.com), Darren Rowse prefers a contact form, and David Meerman Scott uses both.
My impression is their tactics are to prevent email spam bombardment:
I received these messages over the past 24 hours. Other than sender and subject, I have no idea what’s inside. I never clicked into them. I don’t need to.
The pests never entered my inbox. Why?
I use GMail, or the free Google Mail service which is great at blocking spam:
After seven years of using Yahoo Mail, I was inundated with spam. I routinely used ascii tools such as this to convert my address into anti-spam gobbledygook. But I shifted to GMail over two spurts in 2007 and 2008 and never went back. Spam protection was a major reason.
Every few days, I browse through the list to check for false positives. Nine and nine-tenth times out of 10, everything there is marked spam for a reason.
Occasionally, inbound messages pass the spam test and enter my inbox. I don’t open the messages, though, but click a “report spam” button and the offender is whisked away.
Spam messages are deleted automatically if stored for 30 days, but I usually toss the list after 14. Right now, there are 295 messages from 10 days. Imagine if I still had Yahoo Mail or Hotmail or who-knows-what email solution with a less-fancy spam trapper; egad!
You can continue to email Chris, Darren, and David by copying-pasting-and-rewriting text or filling out forms. Or you can email me by clicking this link which should automatically open your email program: ariherzog@gmail.com.
Oh yeah. If you don’t have an email program on your machine, I have a contact form, too.
You?
Related posts:
- Hacking Hotmail Accounts is Easy
- Why Email Marketing Still Sucks
- Join FeedBite.com and Receive Unwanted Spam
Comments:
Ari Herzog is an online media strategist and Newburyport City Councilor-Elect.
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Gmail is great, but there will always be determined people who can get by pretty much anything (contact forms, captcha, etc).
It’s a bane of our times but I guess one we’re stuck with. For now.
Danny Brown´s last blog post..Free Subscriptions Cost Money Too
I’ve been debating a decision to go the mostly-GMail route. What are your thoughts about GMail vs. POP3 e-mail tied to one’s domain?
Hey Ari! I use Mail (from Mac) and I love how they block spam – I get iffy messages marked as Junk – every time I confirm that it learns to sweep it away. I hardly get any now. The best part is that I don’t miss the good emails – b/c if Mail isn’t sure, it shows me everything…things don’t get lost in a spam folder. Very Happy with my system.
On my site, I have a contact form…
Julie Roads´s last blog post..Is your cab light on???
Gmail is great. I use a contact form on my site, just because it’s easy especially for people who don’t use an email program like Outlook or haven’t configured their browser to open up their web based mail.
My problem is how to keep mail FROM my site (forum registration confirmations, stuff like that) from getting caught in my poster’s spam filters.
Tracy´s last blog post..Yes and Go!
I use Gmail and am satisfied with it. Granted I don’t have nearly as many people looking to spam me, but still find the majority of crap in my spam folder, that really should be there. It does a good job filtering.
Craig´s last blog post..Choosing an online savings account
Yeah, GMail is 99.9% accurate as far as my email is concerned and I have all my legacy addresses feeding into a couple of accounts. One thing to watch out for is that bounce errors often get flagged as spam so you may miss that one of your emails didn’t get through.
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