Re: SPAM filter on Community's EMail Address?
From: Fred H Olson (fholsoncohousing.org)
Date: Thu, 28 Jun 2007 15:18:38 -0700 (PDT)
A few years ago a study found that most SPAM is sent to addresses
"harvested" from the web.  Thus keeping an address off the web is
a good way to reduce spam coming to it.

To reduce SPAM, on my web pages I:

o  rarely use a "mailto://"; link (the kind that sends email)
   since the "robots" that harvest email will pick upt the address

o  do not put addresses on the web in normal format (with and at sign)

o  I usually put addresses in an "obscured" format something like:
   fholson at cohousing.org
   fholson [at] cohousing.org
   fholson at cohousing dot org

o  Avoid addresses like info at cohousing.org     or
   tours at cohousing.org  which can use a common word for a username
   that be guessed by so called dictionary spam

If you do want to use a "mailto://";  you can use an address that requires
manual fixing to work  such as fholsonNOAPAM [at] cohousing.org and then
instruct people to delete the capital letters.  All of these require
a bit of extra effort from the sender but are not as annoying as the
whitelist procedures which I agree are very annoying **.

BTW the archives of cohousing-L which makes web pages out of posts
"obscure" addresses from the body of messages -- the sender's address
is obscured using an image of an at sign.

** If someone requests assistance with their subscription in a way that
requires me to "validate" my reply to get around their spam control,
I typically take that as indication that they dont want my help very
much and I drop the matter...  Whitelists are very effective and
controlling spam (that is effectively why cohousing-L rarely
distributes SPAM), but they are a hassle for new correspondents.

Fred list manager

PS I'm trying to recruit my city councilor to live in the house next door
to us but I'm still looking for others ...
See Minneapolis, MN house avail. next door to Fred
http://lists.cohousing.org/archives/cohousing-l/msg26086.html


--
Fred H. Olson  Minneapolis,MN 55411  USA        (near north Mpls)
Communications for Justice -- Free, superior listserv's w/o ads:
http://justcomm.org      My Link Pg: http://fholson.cohousing.org
612-588-9532 (7am-10pm CST/CDT)   Email: fholson at cohousing.org


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