Robespierre

If you opt to have your e-mail address appended to your handle when you post, the address becomes visible to the web crawlers that spammers use to accumulate targets.

You can see where your address is exposed by googling for it. I just happened to do it this morning because since I turned on the option my spam volume has quadrupled. Fodor's is the only site that turned up references.

Fodor's - use an applet to link to the forums from the default page, or don't HREF individual posts on a page that can be accessed through the directory tree. Thank you.

cigalechanta

Worse is that it's all over google.

bookchick

Neither one of these is new to me. I have my hotmail filter set pretty high, and I don't honestly feel spam's been an issue. In terms of posts appearing on Google, all I can say is this is, after all, a public forum.

BC

Robespierre

Neither one of what?

bookchick

The info that:
1) one's e-mail address, as it appears here, can be targeted for spam

and

2) you can pull up threads from this forum on Google.

BC

Robespierre

A forum, no matter how public, shouldn't broadcast e-mail addresses in a way that primitive automation can access them. I googled several other contributors' addresses, and the ONLY place on the entire Internet where they are indexed is at Fodor's.

indytravel

Neither is an issue for me.

I've known this for a long time. That's one of the reasons my real e-mail address is not listed.

Yes the e-mail address next to my indytravel is a valid address. I do check it occasionally. But it's not my main one. AT&T lets me run multiple addresses so I do.

I have an indyjunk e-mail I use. It's for those sites that make you give them an e-mail address to get in like the NY Times. Anything sent to that address goes right into the trash can and is automatically deleted in a few days. I almost never look at it.

111op

But Robespierre, you could have seen that your e-mail address was exposed by looking at the threads that you posted to.

So, technically it's not Fodors.com that's exposing your e-mails. When you registered you picked the default option (most likely), which exposes your e-mail address.

All the threads are searchable. I've already come across this a couple of times.

111op

Anyway, one way or another, the spammers win, I think. I've a "real" e-mail address, with my full name, that I use with people I know. It used to be very good in terms of spam (I hardly get any). These days I get spam addressed by myself sent to me selling penis enlargement pills....

What I want to know is if someone else out in cyberspace gets e-mails from 111op selling the same pills.

indytravel

Robespierre Fodors does not broadcast my e-mail address. I do.

It's your choice whether or not to reveal your e-mail address. You've chosen not to reveal yours. That's fine.

I've knowingly chosen to reveal mine. That's fine too.

Intrepid1

I'd be much more concerned about the amounts of money Fodors is making by selling their list of email addresses to others.

cigalechanta

Lol, 111op, but I'll look for you. What I want to know is how come I get penis enlargement cures but never for the breast

Jocelyn_P

A breast enlargement PILL--now there's an idea!

indytravel

I do use spam blocking on my e-mail accounts but they are never 100%. Something will eventually slip through.

Interestingly enough in the 2 years I've been running my indytravel e-mail address here, I've never had a piece of spam mail come through.

It leads me to believe the internet crawlers aren't as good as people would think and that Fodors does not share my e-mail address.

Robespierre

ARE YOU KIDDING!!!??? I just googled your address and got 1,130 hits. And trust me, the spammers' crawlers are very, very good.

Putting an e-mail address on a post should not expose it to web crawlers. Period. The webmaster should not index pages that have addresses on them.

An address can be in plain sight and still not be visible to a spider. Spiders look for a MAILTO tag (or a [email protected] pattern) through a top-down search of a site, starting with the default page (or the server's IP address). In order for a spammer to target an un-indexed address, they would have to have humans searching web forums manually, and the economics of spamming simply don't justify that.

Why should we give this slime any more assistance than we have to? It is a trivial matter to cloak e-mail addresses, and not doing it is indefensible.

indytravel

Robespierre I was curious so I just checked my indytravel screened mail slot at at&t. It's empty.

Since it holds 10 days worth before deleting it, that means I haven't gotten a spam e-mail in at least 10 days. Not one.

Robespierre

I don't care. You shouldn't have to screen your mail. For one thing, someone may have been trying to reach you but the filters eliminated their message without even telling you.

Spammers cost everyone money, because of the bandwidth that their broadcasts consume, and we should do everything in our power to stamp them out.

Filters do not accomplish that. Only good website management will.

RufusTFirefly

Like others here, I have more than one e-mail address--eight actually. I use them for different purposes. I have two that I use for activities that could open the addresses to spammers--entering contests, posting on websites like fodors.com, etc.

Robespierre

Good for you. I have about twenty.

Webmasters shouldn't expose e-mail addresses.

RufusTFirefly

Dang, I'm on the wrong side of the email-address gap!