Domain
by Michael A. Sokolewicz

Anti-Spammers Campaign

You may be wondering why I always spell out my email address instead of just submitting it in the "normal" way (blaaa@splimdom.com).

The answer is that there are many, many rather unscrupulous people out there who stomp all over our privacy rights. The process goes like this: they run programs which automatically extract your email address (if it's found somewhere on your pages), and then, without asking you, put it into a list of millions of other email addresses. Then they sell these lists for exorbitant prices to other unscrupulous people who, in a process called "spamming", send you tons of email for which you haven't the slightest interest.

All addresses will almost certainly, eventually end up on one of these lists. You can't really avoid it: opening your door to friends unfortunately opens it to rats, too. But we can definitely make it difficult for them, and reduce the number of lists in which they appear.

Now, if you actually like getting junk paper-mail (the kind with stamps on it), then read no further. You'll be in heaven with all the great junk email you'll receive as well eventually.

But if you're like me, and you feel you have a right to control who sends things to your email address and who doesn't, then read on...

Anti-Spammers Campaign

If you don't like this situation either, then do what I'm doing. First of all, include your email address as name at domain dot com instead of name@domain.com; this will make it more difficult for the automatic programs to find your email address. Then include a bunch of nonsensical email addresses in your WWW pages as META tags or HIDDEN tags:

<META NAME="blaaa@blimmm.com">
<INPUT TYPE=HIDDEN NAME="flimmm@flamm.com">
<META NAME="whimmm@whammm.com">
<INPUT TYPE=HIDDEN NAME="timmmie@tummmy.com">
etc.

and a few of these, to keep them from adjusting their programs:

<META NAME="blaaa at blimmm dot com">
<INPUT TYPE=HIDDEN NAME="flimmm at flamm dot com">
<META NAME="whimmm at whammm dot com">
<INPUT TYPE=HIDDEN NAME="timmmie at tummmy dot com">
etc.

These tags won't show up on the receivers' screens, but the automatic programs will find them. And if enough people do this with enough fictitious email addresses, the lists those idiots try to sell will eventually be 90% garbage. When that's the case, hopefully no one will want to pay money for them, and spamming will become a lot more difficult.

PS: By the way, the more creative you are with these names, the better.
PPS: Don't use email addresses of people you know; that will simply defeat the purpose.

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Michael A. Sokolewicz
mike at sokolewicz dot com