Sunday, June 05, 2005
Techtalker - email addresses
Two things have prompted me to select the topic for this week's piece.The first is the judgment of a US court handing down a nine year jail term to a spammer. Jeremy Jaynes of Raleigh, N.C., was convicted in November for using false Internet addresses to send mass e-mail ads through an AOL server. And the second is repeated queries on the manner in which my email address is mentioned at the end of the piece. Surely, somebody writes a tech column should know how to write his
email address.
The reason is simple. If you write your email the traditional way say techtalker@gmail.com, you become a sitting duck for spammers. Chances are that your article would land up on the net in one form or the other. Say the newspaper is online, or a reader might like to post it somewhere, or even forward it to another friend. By doing this, the email address becomes open to abuse for spammers.
Spammers, and believe me, most of them are very smart, have designed grepping bots that keep of surfing the net and collecting email addresses from websites, blogs and even the usenet. The entire collection of emails then becomes a target for spamming. Some have gone a step ahead. They collect, say a million addresses, burn them on a CD and then sell it to bulk email marketing companies.
Believe me, there is nothing you can do about it. If there is an anti spamming law in the US, it may not be applicable in Russia. And the server through which the bulk email is routed could be located at a place where the anti spamming law does not work. So the best way is to write your email address in san encoded and non traditional form so that you can fool (or at least try to fool) the greppers.
First and foremost, give the @ sign a miss. so instead of techtalker@gmail.com, write techtalker at gmail.com, or better still techtalker (AT) gmail.com, or even techtalker at the rate of gmail.com. Even the .com can be written as dot com or point com or (dot) com. In fact you can be a little more creative here. you can write techtalker (yes techtalker) at the rate of gmail dot com. I will provide a few more examples, and leave you to try out other ideas.
But do not be so creative that nobody can make out your email address.
techtalkerATgmail!org (note the exclamation mark)
techtalker_A@T__searchlores.org (and below this write use "@" not "__A@T__")
techtalker[AT]gmail[POINT]com
techtalker(_AT_)gmail(_POINT_)com
techtalker(press SHIFT 2 on keyboard)gmail(POINT)com
But as I write this, I am told that some new grepper bots can
translate (at) and (dot) into working email addresses. So the hare and hound race against spammers continues.
email address.
The reason is simple. If you write your email the traditional way say techtalker@gmail.com, you become a sitting duck for spammers. Chances are that your article would land up on the net in one form or the other. Say the newspaper is online, or a reader might like to post it somewhere, or even forward it to another friend. By doing this, the email address becomes open to abuse for spammers.
Spammers, and believe me, most of them are very smart, have designed grepping bots that keep of surfing the net and collecting email addresses from websites, blogs and even the usenet. The entire collection of emails then becomes a target for spamming. Some have gone a step ahead. They collect, say a million addresses, burn them on a CD and then sell it to bulk email marketing companies.
Believe me, there is nothing you can do about it. If there is an anti spamming law in the US, it may not be applicable in Russia. And the server through which the bulk email is routed could be located at a place where the anti spamming law does not work. So the best way is to write your email address in san encoded and non traditional form so that you can fool (or at least try to fool) the greppers.
First and foremost, give the @ sign a miss. so instead of techtalker@gmail.com, write techtalker at gmail.com, or better still techtalker (AT) gmail.com, or even techtalker at the rate of gmail.com. Even the .com can be written as dot com or point com or (dot) com. In fact you can be a little more creative here. you can write techtalker (yes techtalker) at the rate of gmail dot com. I will provide a few more examples, and leave you to try out other ideas.
But do not be so creative that nobody can make out your email address.
techtalkerATgmail!org (note the exclamation mark)
techtalker_A@T__searchlores.org (and below this write use "@" not "__A@T__")
techtalker[AT]gmail[POINT]com
techtalker(_AT_)gmail(_POINT_)com
techtalker(press SHIFT 2 on keyboard)gmail(POINT)com
But as I write this, I am told that some new grepper bots can
translate (at) and (dot) into working email addresses. So the hare and hound race against spammers continues.
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