Email address protection

[FreeThinker]

When I first started posting stories on Nifty, I had to change my email address constantly because each time, someone was using my address to send out spam advertising porn and Viagra. I got a lot of complaints about that, understandably. A friend who was in Internet security said bots harvest email addresses and use them to send out spam and suggested when I post my email address in a story that I substitute the words "at" and "dot" for the symbols. As soon as I did that, the problem seemed to stop. Because I haven't posted anything to Nifty in years, I am wondering if that is still an issue. Can I now safely post my email address in the correct format, or should I continue to make the modifications?

[Camy]

Yes, bots will still lovingly grab your email address for their oh so nefarious purposes. 'at' and 'dot' substitutions are okay, though it is best to use something like Google's free recaptcha: http://www.google.com/recaptcha/mailhide/

[Merkin]

It seems like a lovely solution but I always have great difficulty reading the twisty lettering and figuring out which are capital letters and which are not.

[Camy]

It seems like a lovely solution but I always have great difficulty reading the twisty lettering and figuring out which are capital letters and which are not.

A good point, James. Captcha is not always easy, but you can ask it for a different 'picture' if you want.

Considering email addresses are easy to get, maybe the best way around the problem is to sign up for an email address you only ever use for Nifty, or for that one story. If you use Gmail it'll take care of most of the spam for you, too.

[FreeThinker]

I'm not worried about receiving spam- Gmail does stop that. I'm worried about others using my address to send spam.

[The Pecman]

There's nothing you can do from stopping other people from forging your address and using it for spam. I could send you an email that looks like it's from "Barack Obama <theprez@whitehouse.gov>", and there's nothing to stop it.

But if people use basic protection and good judgement, they can keep the incoming spam to a minimum. Google, Yahoo, and the usual mail suspects all have pretty good spam filtering; I doubt if I even get more than a couple a week these days.

[Paul_and_Paco]

Hi Guys...

Paco and I have Gmail accounts that have our ages connected to the spam filter, so we do not get spam... mostly. The only spam we get is from Twitter and Facebook. (knock wood) This goes for my stories email address, that I use on two different sites. This might not help most of you guys, but you could add a lower age in your profile in Gmail, like under 18.