Ask Leo! by Leo A. Notenboom

Why shouldn't I post my email address in a public forum?

Search First! Then browse: Categories | Full Archive | By Date | Newsletter

Home » Internet

Summary: Spammers harvest email via a variety of means. One of the most common is to simply surf the web and look for anything that might be an email address.

So many discussion forums and technical assistance sites, including yours, ask for an email address to post comments, and yet friends tell me never to put my real address in. Sometimes I need to include my email address as part of my comment or question, but I'm told that's even worse! Why is that, and what should I do?

The why is easy.

The what to do? Not so much.

Why is it a bad idea? In a word, spam.

Anything that will put your email address on to a publicly accessible web page will, in all likelihood, cause you to start getting more and more and more and more spam. Why? Because one technique that spammers use is to visit all the web pages that they can, and collect anything that looks like an email address to add to their mailing list.

Here's an example: muchspam@ask-leo.com - now that I've published that email address on the web on this page, even though it's the only place that email address has or will be officially mentioned, it will now start getting spammed. Just because it was published on a web page, and it looks like a valid email address.

So when you include your email address in an on-line posting - say on a discussion board, or even in a comment here on Ask Leo!, you're almost literally asking for spam.

Don't do it.

In my case, you'll notice that in order to post a comment on Ask Leo!, you're required to provide an email address. But notice also, that that email address is not published on the web page (in my case, if you use a valid email address, it's simply a way for me to follow up with you directly should I have a question about your comment). But be careful - not all weblogs and discussion forums hide your email address. Many turn right around and put it on the web page for all to see. Including the spammers.

Before you post anywhere be sure you know what's going to happen to your email address when you do.

Are you a member of a mailing list? Does that mailing list have an on-line archive? Then your email address may be available to the spammers for harvesting. Ever post on Usenet? The email you used is probably already in the spammer's lists. An early Usenet post "before I knew better" is the reason my wife gets hundreds of spam per day.

So use a fake address - or better yet, don't use one at all.

Now, what if you need to post your email address in a publicly accessible place? There are several techniques for obfuscating the address. Here are a couple of my favorites:

askleo at gmail.com
askleo@gmail.seeohem

The first you've probably seen already in other places. It simply requires that you, as a human, realize that the " at " needs to be replaced with "@". My fear is that this technique is also fairly easy to decode by computer, and the spammers will soon catch on.

The second requires some thought. If you sound out "seeohem", you'll realize that it sounds like c, o, m. "com". Hence you realize that the ".seeohem" really means ".com" and can make that translation when you type in the email address.

The biggest drawback to these approaches is that the email links are not clickable. Anything you can click on to get an email address, the spammers can use to harvest it. Even copy-paste doesn't work, for exactly the same reason.

But protecting yourself from spam is important. And not asking for more, is even more important.

Related:

Helpful? Get new articles weekly by email in my FREE newsletter!

Your Name:
Your Email:


Why Subscribe?

Article C2397 - August 3, 2005

Was this article helpful? «Yes» «No»

Recent Comments
21 Comments

sometimes I use fake email adress
or use special applications from http://rapid4me.com/

Posted by: kolia at October 7, 2009 6:13 AM

Thanks for good advices! To be honest, I had a bad experience. I had good e-mail adress, but then every day I received hundreds of letters from spammers. Unfotunately, I could not save my e-mail at that time and had a lot of problems because of that.
Kolia, thank you a lot for good advice. I really found an application at http://rapid4me.com . Hope, it will help me in the future.

Posted by: Barbara at October 15, 2009 11:04 AM

By the way, now I use the false e-mail (Russian, I think)and I check it ones a week. At least, it will not be so hard to loose it...

Posted by: Barbara at October 15, 2009 11:20 AM

You could use a service like classimail.com that gives you a contact form you can post on any site. Here is mine as an example:

http://www.classimail.com/1/posts/2-Craigslist/9-Contact-Link/39-john-bentley.html

Your real email address will never be exposed unless you reply to the person sending a message.

Posted by: john at November 25, 2009 6:18 PM

The biggest drawback to these approaches is that the email links are not clickable. Anything you can click on to get an email address, the spammers can use to harvest it. Even copy-paste doesn't work, for exactly the same reason.

Posted by: James at January 29, 2010 11:45 AM

Post a comment on "Why shouldn't I post my email address in a public forum?":






(Email Address will not be published.)

Remember Me?

By popular demand...
my tip jar
Cuppa Joe
Buy Leo a Latte!

(you may use HTML tags for style)

RSS feed Subscribe to the RSS Feed specifically for comments on this article.

Before commenting, please...

  • Read the article at the top of this page. If your comment shows you didn't, it'll be deleted and ignored.

  • Comment only on this article. Use the Google search box at the top of the page if you have a question about something else.

  • Don't include personal information in the comment. No email addresses. No phone numbers. No physical addresses.

  • Don't spam. Excessive links to unrelated sites within a comment or across multiple comments will cause all such comments to be removed.

  • Don't ask me to recover lost passwords or hacked accounts. I can't, and those comments will be deleted.

  • I can't respond to every comment. And I can't vouch for the accuracy of others who do.

Please wait. Your comment is being processed ...


Question? Ask Leo!