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I came up with this question when I was reading my RSS feeds when I got to an "Ask Engadget" post that requested users to email questions to "ask [at] engadget
by kylec 16y ago
I came up with this question when I was reading my RSS feeds when I got to an "Ask Engadget" post that requested users to email questions to "ask [at] engadget [dawt] com". It seemed pretty silly for a popular website to obfuscate their email address in such a weak way, and it got me to thinking whether or not the widely-used technique is effective at all.
Does anyone have spam problem with a published email address? Have you had success reducing spam by obfuscating it?
- dmd 16y agoAnecdata: Spam just isn't really a problem. I've been using the address dmd@3e.org very publicly (as in, unobfuscatedly posting to usenet, forums, etc) for about 15 years now. It currently forwards to gmail, where I get roughly 3000 pieces of spam mail each day (yes, that's a new spam every 30 seconds, round the clock). Of those, typically 0 or 1 end up in my inbox. I have, in the past, done spot-checks of my spam folder to check for false-positives, and have never found a single one. Gmail is really good at spam filtering.
- christophe971 16y agoSame here. Gmail has been my spam-filter for years. I have no problem putting my e-mail addresses in clear anywhere.
- mootothemax 16y agoAnecdata II: I get about 1,500 spams a day to my Google-managed email address, and have found a worrying number of emails in my spam folder. It works really well for you, sadly less well for me :-/
- drdaeman 16y ago> have found a worrying number of emails in my spam folder Sorry, but just to be sure - am I getting it right, those emails were false-positives?
- mootothemax 16y agoSorry, but just to be sure - am I getting it right, those emails were false-positives Yup. For the most part, ones that I'm fine with - e.g. order confirmations from stores - but I've found the odd one in there from someone the first time they email me, most frustrating. On the other hand, I once nearly missed out on a fun blind date after my initial email was helpfully filtered by Hotmail into the girl-in-question's spam folder. And it didn't even mention Viagra!
- riffraff 16y agoFor the sake of the argument: if you get 3000 messages of spam per day it means that it takes a lot of effort to check them all. Also, as you receive a lot of spam, the distribution is highly skewed towards spam, so it is unlikely you find a false positive because there are a lot more true positive, not because the false positives are absent. So there is a chance you are getting false positives, but have failed to spot them (I know it happens to me).