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
11-18-06) Today TRnews has 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! (This whole notice is about how we
are protecting TRnews from spam it receives. Your email addresses have never appeared
on our pages.) However, for us we've decided it's better to stop the spammers
in their tracks rather than after they've got our address.
There
are several ways to prevent "harvesters" from being able to read an
address on a site. Starting today TRnews is using one of these ways by showing
all email addresses as graphics files on the web page. You may notice that our
email addresses are a little bolder, have a slightly different type face,and if
you click on them nothing happens. This is because our email addresses are now
like photos rather than real type. They can't be read by the "harvesters."
Of course it's not 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. Now it requires that you actually have to write down
our email address and type it in your email letter yourself. Oh! Dear! This is
what we have to do now with a phone book!
--the Editors