This question is easily answered in view of spam concept.
Spam is junk (unwanted, unsolicited) messages on the Internet, and also distribution of messages of that kind.
This term is applicable to email, ICQ, SMS and even to web pages.
Nearly all uninvited e-mail messages can be considered as spam. Practically, almost all spam consists of advertising.
Spam can be a serious problem for those who receive a large amount of it. It takes a lot of time to receive, sort out and delete spam. Sometimes even anti-spam software fails to filter out all junk messages.
I experience spam since I began using e-mail. Finally, I was fed up with all that ads, software and other unwanted materials. I made up my mind to get rid of this uncontrolled data flow.
I tried to use filtering at first. Then I tried to read message headers before downloading the whole message. Both methods seemed inconvenient and time-consuming, taking into account morphology of Russian and various spammers' tricks.
I was much interested in finding out where the strangers find my personal e-mail address.
The main way to collect e-mail addresses is to scan public web sites. Spammers have special software to automate this hard work.
Some measures should be taken by any person who needs to receive messages from ordinary Internet users, but wants to reduce spam.
The first step to be taken is to reduce the number of publications of any e-mail address at any website. If you use discussion (chat) forums at bulletin board systems, make sure they have “Hide my e-mail address” option. Use this option every time you can. There are ways of receiving messages from strangers without immediate e-mail address disclosure.
Of course, there are ways to improve your privacy on the Internet.
I don't mean making your e-mail address totally inaccessible. The goal is to hide it from people or organizations who have no personal interest in you.
The are two general solutions for this issue:
The first method assumes some server-side programming.
The second solution is technically easier to implement, and it can include:
The last item is doubly inconvenient due to usability inconsistency and less level of hiding e-mail address. Programs able to analyze any HTML code are easier to write than similar with script analysis.
I prefer using server-side programming and (less often) client-side scripting to hide my e-mail addresses.
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Last edited: 2006-02-19 19:16:49 (Moscow)