E-Mail Addresses on Web Sites

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Why you shouldn’t include a link to your e-mail address on your Web site.

Many people — including me! — use their Web sites as a kind of global calling card, a way to share information about themselves or their companies with others all over the world. It’s common to want to share your contact information with site visitors — particularly potential customers — so they can contact you. This is often done through the use of a mailto tag. For example, e-mail me! which appears as a clickable e-mail link.

Unfortunately there are people out there who want your e-mail address, people who want to scam you into sending money to Nigeria, advertise their online casinos, sell you prescription drugs, show you their porn sites — the list goes on and on. If you have your e-mail address on any Web site, you probably already get a lot of this spam. That’s because of computer programs that crawl through Web sites and harvest e-mail addresses that are included in the otherwise innocent mailto tag. Heck, they even harvest addresses that aren’t part of a mailto tag, so just including your e-mail address on a Web page without a link can get you on a bulk e-mail list.

So what’s the solution? There are a few.

One popular and easy-to-implement solution is to turn your e-mail address into a text phrase that a site visitor must see and manually type in to use. For example, me@domain.com becomes me at domain dot com or meATdomainDOTcom. You get the idea. Someone who wanted to send you an e-mail message, would be able to figure that out — if he couldn’t, he really shouldn’t be surfing the ‘Net anyway — and manually enter the correct translation in his e-mail program. But e-mail harvesters supposedly can’t figure this out (which I find hard to believe) so the e-mail address isn’t harvested.

Another solution is to use an e-mail obfuscation program. These programs take e-mail addresses and change or insert characters to make them impossible to read. The e-mail addresses look okay on the site — to a person viewing them — and work fine in a mailto link — when used from the Web site. WordPress plugins are available to do this. I don’t use any of them, so I can’t comment on how well they work. But they must be at least a little helpful if they’re available. You can find a few here, on the WordPress Codex.

The solution I use is form-based e-mail. I created a Contact Form with fields for the site visitor to fill out. When the form is submitted, a program processes it and sends it to my e-mail address. Because that address is not on the Web page that includes the form — or on any other Web page, for that matter — e-mail harvesters cannot see it. As a result, I’m able to provide a means of contacting me via e-mail that keeps my e-mail address safe from spammers.

The program I use is called NateMail from MindPalette Software. it’s a free PHP tool that’s easy to install and configure. But what I like best about it is that you can set it up with multiple e-mail addresses. Use a corresponding drop-down list in your form to allow the site visitor to choose the person the e-mail should go to. NateMail directs the message to the correct person. You can see this in action on my other WordPress-based site, wickenburg-az.com, in its Contact Form. If you want a few more features, such as the ability to attach files to an e-mail message, MindPalette offers ProcessForm for only $15.

Other WordPress users are likely to have their own favorite methods of protecting their e-mail addresses from spammers. With luck, a few of them who read this will share their thoughts in the Comments for this post.

One more thing…this doesn’t just apply to WordPress-based sites. It applies to all Web sites. And a contact form tool like NateMail will work with any PHP-compatible Web server.

If you’re already getting spam, using one of these methods won’t stop it. It’ll just keep the situation from getting much worse. Your best bet is to change your e-mail address and protect the new one. In my case, that’s a big pain in the butt — so many people I need to be in touch with have my e-mail address and, worse yet, I often use it as a login for Web sites I visit (which does indeed make the spam situation worse). I’m working on a plan to phase out the bad addresses and replace them with ones that I protect. Until then, I have to rely on the spam-catching features of my ISP and my e-mail software to sort out the bad stuff — currently about 20-40 messages a day — so I don’t have to.

The Eyes Had It

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I begin to lose my close vision.

It’s inevitable. As a person ages, he loses his close vision. Now, as I approach my 45th birthday, I’m beginning to lose mine.

My far vision has always been bad. I started wearing glasses in 5th grade and I’ve been wearing contact lenses since my college days. Because I seldom wear glasses, however, people assume I have normal vision. I don’t. My vision is very bad. At this point, I wouldn’t trust myself to walk five steps without my contacts or glasses on.

It always makes me laugh when I see the “corrective lenses” restriction on my driver’s license and pilot medical certificate. Do they honestly think I’m crazy enough to drive or fly without some kind of visual aid?

I’m fortunate in that my vision, although bad, is extremely correctable. That means that with my lenses on, I can see just as well — if not better — than most people who don’t have “vision problems.” In my life, I’ve had two friends who weren’t so fortunate. Their vision was not correctable. Both worked with computers for a living. I still remember sitting with one of them at his desk while he stuck his face up against his 21″ monitor — considered very large at the time — reading something onscreen.

(Apple has a software solution for this called Universal Access. I wrote briefly about it in my Tiger book.)

Two years ago, I got an eye exam. My far vision had worsened again. My doctor gave me an option.

“You can keep the prescription you have or go with a stronger prescription. But if you go with the stronger prescription, you might have some problems with your close vision.”

I didn’t believe her and I went with the stronger prescription. After all, I liked being able to see things off in the distance, especially when I flew. The air can be so clear up here, away from the city. Visibility often exceeds 50 miles. I wanted to see those 50 miles as well as I could.

But she was right. After switching to the new prescription, I started noticing a problem with reading small print. At first, it was just a minor problem that could be solved by adding light. But it seemed to get worse and worse. I finally broke down and bought a pair of “cheaters” — you know, those cheap reading glasses you can buy in a drugstore. They were a +1.25 prescription and they really helped.

The trouble with wearing cheaters is that the more you wear them, the more you come to depend on them. I tried hard for a long time to just wear them when I was reading in bed. But it wasn’t long before I found myself needing them other times, like when trying to read package ingredients in the supermarket or drug store. Add more light.

I had an eye exam earlier this year and my far vision prescription has gotten worse again. But I learned my lesson. So far, I haven’t bought contacts in the new prescription. I don’t want my close vision to get any worse.

The doctor told me that with my new prescription, I’d need cheaters with a prescription of +1.5 or +1.75.

Oddly enough, with my contacts and glasses off, my close vision is still incredibly good. I can, for example, read the microprint on newly designed $100 bills. You wouldn’t believe how much stuff is printed in those tiny letters all over our new money! Of course, at the same time, I can’t recognize Mike sitting across the kitchen table from me. Or read the page of a book more than 5 inches from my nose.

I’m not complaining. I still consider myself very fortunate to have vision corrections available to me. So many people have vision problems that can’t be fixed. Many of them are probably grateful for what they have, too.

I saw an episode of Scientific American Frontiers yesterday that featured a man who’d been blind for the past 11 years. They’d given him an implant and a special pair of glasses with a video camera built in, enabling him to see up to 16 blobs of light. (Think of a computer monitor with a resolution of 16 blurry pixels.) He was so grateful to have even that — the ability to see the way the light changed when something moved in front of him, the ability to see something bright nearby. I’m lucky compared to someone like him.

You’re lucky if you don’t have any visual problems.

Right now, I’m sitting at the kitchen table, typing this onto my laptop. I’m having no trouble seeing or reading it. Yet.

But I know what lies ahead. I’m not anxious to go there, but I know I can’t stop time.

I’m Not the Only One

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A friend of mine unknowingly echoes my sentiments.

My friend Jim, who I don’t think reads this blog, wrote the following in an e-mail yesterday to explain why he wasn’t able to get in the mood to write a humor piece for wickenburg-az.com:

However, I spent eight hours today dealing with computer and printer problems, and it may take a few hours to get my sense of humor back. Everything is up and running, but I hate to have people in India talk down to me.

Jim should read my experience with Microsoft’s India-based technical support. It won’t cheer him up, but at least he’ll know that he isn’t the only one frustrated beyond belief.

Outsourcing — or “Offshoring” — Revisited (Again)

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An interesting document exposed by Slate.com.

First, I need to correct myself. I’ve been using the word “outsourcing” to refer to jobs sent overseas. The correct term for that is “offshoring.” Outsourcing is the same thing, but it doesn’t necessarily mean the job has gone overseas. Jobs can be outsourced to other companies in the same country.

That said, Slate.com has published a document that details the following sad little fact:

According to a study released in March by the Government Accountability Office, 48 states “offshore” at least some administration of federally funded, state-administered government programs, most of it in India and most of it involving welfare benefits. The GAO also found that states were offshoring some administration of child support enforcement and — in what seems like a cruel joke at the expense of American workers displaced by cheap foreign labor — unemployment insurance!

Read it (and weep) here: “Hello, Bangalore? Where’s My Unemployment Check?” by Timothy Noah.

The Deity in the Data

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What can happen when faith sets out to prove its power through science.

I heard a podcast about this study the other day — a study that attempted to prove that people who were prayed for right before major surgery were more likely to have a more successful outcome to the surgery. The Deity in the Data by William Saletan on Slate.com presents some details and possible conclusions.