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Would you like some spam with that?
Posted by editor Tuesday April 01, 2008 - 10:09 am (8 months ago)Since starting the Cape Cod Daily, I have read thousands of local online news stories. Many that appear to have the right intentions actually do more harm than good. For example, a few weeks ago, there was a story about the Yarmouth Police email tip line.
In the story they gave the email address for the tip line. On paper, not a big deal. Online, that’s a huge mistake. I am sure the YPD’s email tip line is jammed with junk emails after that story ran on at least 3 different sites, none of which hid the email address from spam bots. (Not to mention that the YPD’s website is loaded with spammable email addresses. I guess many “webmasters” just don’t get it.)
Well what good is an online story about an email tip line if you can’t print the email address? You can print the email address, just use any number of techniques to hide it from spambots.
What is a spam bot? They are programs that crawl the web looking for email addresses to hammer with junk mail or spam. Any email address on the web is fair game unless it is ‘hidden” by using javascript or some other method.
The Cape Cod Times publishes the email of the reporter/writer on many of their online stories. Cape Cod Today also publishes many email addresses openly (including their own) without taking the inevitable spam problem into account.
If you are going to publish your own email address or somebody else’s on the internet, be smart and “hide” it from spammers.
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