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Tweakin' and spammin' February 21, 2004
I hate getting spam, and have taken sufficient safeguards as to relegate it to an occasional nuisance instead of a constant problem. I never give out my real e-mail address unless I absolutely have to, preferring to give out fakes whenever possible (in fact, if anyone has the address "marf@marf.com" they're probably pretty annoyed with me). And if I have to use a real e-mail, I use a HotMail account that has pretty good filters and isn't used for anything important.
One problem, however, is putting up e-mail contact information on a website like this. There are programs that methodically browse through websites, using their superior robotic intelligence to harvest e-mail addresses so that they can inform their owners of the wonders of mortgage refinancing, erectile disfunction, housewives gone wild, and ordering mulch through the Internet. Not to mention the occasional Nigerian prince in need of succor.
Fortunately, I like to fiddle with things and improve them, so I installed a script on the Contact Us page that replaces the mailto: links (bad!) with a HTML form that sends its contents to me via e-mail (good!).
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This should cut my daily servings of spam down even further. Try it out.
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Site Maintenance
Comments
Posted by Tungsten on February 21, 2004 8:57 PM:
This little javascript from Hiveware does a killer job of encrypting e-mail addresses and making them unharvestable but still clickable for the browser.
http://www.hiveware.com/enkoder_form.php
I'm down to a scant 10-12 spam mails a day from 40-50 several months ago. Hooray for progress!