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I would like to push back on the idea that you should obfuscate your email address at all. My email addreas is danny@spesh.com. I get a lot of spam -- possibly

I would like to push back on the idea that you should obfuscate your email address at all. My email addreas is danny@spesh.com. I get a lot of spam -- possibly, since I have been distributing that address deliberately on the web and inadvertently in hacked datadumps, a near maximum amount of spam. But the benefits of having people easily find a way to contact me directly has for me far outweighed the (largely solved) challenge of discarding automated spam. Publish your email address! It's okay! Very little bad will happen, and people will be able contact you without going through some strange social media intermediary!

parasti 2y ago
This is appropriate advice for the average HN reader. For everyone else, probably not. I've seen first hand otherwise intelligent people being unable to discern an obvious (to me) online scam from a legitimate business. These are the people spammers are targeting. These are the people that need to obfuscate their email address.
- _joel 2y ago
  So you're saying the same people unable to discern a spam email knows how to embed a mailto: link in an XML document and write webpages. Ok.
  - parasti 2y ago
    Never said that. I'm a web developer. People ask me to add their emails to web pages. Comment quality on here seems to have taken a dive.
- richrichardsson 2y ago
  Even sophicasted users can slip up in the right circumstances. Personal anecdote: one morning, whilst still quite sleepy received a very well crafted Namecheap phishing expedition. I half knew the product they were claiming was lapsed was actually fine, but I had just recently renewed so I thought perhaps there had been a problem I missed, and it was convincing enough that I clicked the link before doing the normal sanity checks. Thankfully the address it went to didn't resolve. Hopefully I would have noticed the obviously incorrect URL before I entered any details, and I have 2FA enabled, but still, I should and do know better, it was just perfect timing for a well crafted attack...
SushiHippie 2y ago
> in hacked datadumps https://haveibeenpwned.com/ https://haveibeenpwned.com/ 45 data breaches and 7 pastes Wow, I don't know if I've ever seen a real address in so many breaches haha

parasti 2y ago

This is appropriate advice for the average HN reader. For everyone else, probably not. I've seen first hand otherwise intelligent people being unable to discern an obvious (to me) online scam from a legitimate business. These are the people spammers are targeting. These are the people that need to obfuscate their email address.

_joel 2y ago
So you're saying the same people unable to discern a spam email knows how to embed a mailto: link in an XML document and write webpages. Ok.
- parasti 2y ago
  Never said that. I'm a web developer. People ask me to add their emails to web pages. Comment quality on here seems to have taken a dive.
richrichardsson 2y ago
Even sophicasted users can slip up in the right circumstances. Personal anecdote: one morning, whilst still quite sleepy received a very well crafted Namecheap phishing expedition. I half knew the product they were claiming was lapsed was actually fine, but I had just recently renewed so I thought perhaps there had been a problem I missed, and it was convincing enough that I clicked the link before doing the normal sanity checks. Thankfully the address it went to didn't resolve. Hopefully I would have noticed the obviously incorrect URL before I entered any details, and I have 2FA enabled, but still, I should and do know better, it was just perfect timing for a well crafted attack...

SushiHippie 2y ago

> in hacked datadumps https://haveibeenpwned.com/ https://haveibeenpwned.com/ 45 data breaches and 7 pastes Wow, I don't know if I've ever seen a real address in so many breaches haha