TRnews
editors:
Roger
Irwin
Tim Amsden
Contact
the editors at: Advisory
Board
Genghis & Sylvia Kahn
Alfred
E. Neuman
Driving a stake in the heart of spam
(Posted
12-7-09) TRnews has always taken steps to prevent email spam. Research has shown
two interesting things about spam. The first is that it accounts for more email
traffic than all other sources as of 2003 and is continuing to expand at an unbelievable
rate of 450% per year. Studies now show that 97% of spam messages are received
by those addresses that have been posted on web pages. Only 3% of the spammers
used addresses obtained from other sources. Most of these addresses are acquired
by "harvester" programs looking for the @ signs surrounded by a name
and a domain. These "harvester" programs scour billions of web pages
24 hrs per day collecting addresses and selling them.
Of
course you may have a spam filter that works pretty well for you but that also
costs money and time. Don't get rid of it! However, we are contiunuing doing our part by stopping the spammers
in their tracks rather than after they've got our addresses.
There
are several ways to prevent "harvesters" from being able to read an
address on a site. For the last three years TRnews has been using one of these ways by showing
all email addresses as graphics files on the web page. You may have noticed that our
email addresses were a little bolder, had a slightly different type face,and if
you clicked on them nothing happened. This is because our email addresses were
like photos rather than real type. They couldn't be read by the "harvesters."
Of course it wasn't quite as easy and elegant, as
before when one could just click on the address and it would automatically show
up in your email program. The graphic required that you actually had to write down
the email address and type it in your email letter yourself. Oh! Dear! This is
what we always have had to do when using a phone book!
We are constantly looking for ways to improve our website and as of this date we are converting our graphic email addresses to spelled out ones. For example: contactus at wherever dot info instead of contactus@wherever.info. Now, all you have to do is click on the address and your own email program will come up and be properly addressed without the harvester bots ever seeing the process.
--the Editors