The easiest way to communicate with web site visitors is via email. The easiest way for spammers to acquire email addresses is by finding them on web sites. Here are some solutions to keep your email address away from spammers while allowing legitimate users to contact you. 1. MailHide It’s part of reCAPTCHA.net and requires […]

This was pretty funny. (via Aaron Wall)

An article from the Wall Street Journal alluded to a solution to spam that might just work. We pay $0.37 for letters and don’t complain (much) about it. We pay for internet access, cable, power, web hosting and a host of other things. What about charging money to send e-mails? Before you write off my […]

I used to make your e-mail address optional when commenting because I never liked giving out my e-mail address but I’m now making it required. I promise not to reveal it anywhere, or to spam you, and if you still don’t trust me feel free to use a fake one, even something humorous. The reason […]

I have a dream that one day, we will share our e-mail addresses with others without having to worry about being deluged with unsolicited e-mail. I have a dream that we’ll be able to post our actual e-mail address on our web sites, without having to tell people to remove this, or add that, or […]

You may have heard about Mailinator, a service used for creating temporary e-mail addresses for site registrations. The standard use case is: 1. You begin registering for a web site that wants your e-mail address. 2. You think of an e-mail address at mailinator (spam@mailinator.com for instance) 3. The web site sends out an e-mail […]

In the seemingly unending fight against spam there’s a new kid on the block. Their solution can be frustrating for non-spammers, but it has its advantages. They use the challenge and response approach to maintain a white list. This means that you give certain users authorization to e-mail you and anyone else who sends you […]

If anything, I’ve noticed a recent increase in spam, in spite of a new law aimed at stopping it. True to their nature, spammers are making a small effort to find loopholes in the law, while some are ignoring it completely. The end result: Spamming continues unabated.

It’s super-instant, always-ready, any-e-mail-you-want e-mail, right now. And with a name like mailinator, it’s bound to be good. Mailinator provides sacrificial e-mail addresses that can be used when signing up for something that requires an e-mail address for confirmation. No passwords, no privacy, and no spam. Even if you don’t use their service, their FAQ […]

Randy Cassingham, of This is True, has created a primer on spam. If you already know a little about spam, it probably won’t be of much interest, but it does a good job of summarizing the problem for newcomers. It also has a couple of sections at the bottom discussing chain letters and urban legends. […]

I’ve heard a lot about SpamCop recently, and after reading this mefi thread I decided to sign up. In short, it’s a free service aimed at stopping spam. When you sign up, you are given a unique email address. Each time you receive spam you just forward the email as an attachment to SpamCop and […]

Research on how spammers get your email address indicates the most common way is through high-traffic web sites. It also showed that masking your email address with HTML entities was an effective way to avoid spam. (via /.)

I got home at 6:30am this morning after working on our project all night and slept until 4pm this afternoon. I didn’t have to go into work so I got some errands done and got my library card. I’m glad I don’t have that schedule every day. I’ve seen an increase in spam lately and […]