Why you shouldn't put your email address in messages

Discussion in 'Forum Announcements and Feedback' started by Daniel Mosquin, Nov 2, 2003.

  1. Daniel Mosquin

    Daniel Mosquin Paragon of Plants UBC Botanical Garden Forums Administrator Forums Moderator 10 Years

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    If you post a message on the forums, I strongly advise against putting your email address in your message.

    The reason for this is to prevent your email address from being harvested by those who would use it to spam you. There are software robots that index all the content on a page (not unlike search engine robots) with the express purpose of gathering email addresses for spammers. They do this by looking for particular patterns, and it just so happens that email addresses all follow the nice pattern of something@something.something

    A better method is to register for the forums and use the email notification system to be informed of replies to messages (see this thread) or to use the private messaging on the forums (to private message someone, click on the green button that says "pm" (see attachment). For the latter, the person needs to have enabled that they wish to receive private messages AND you need to have posted five messages to the forums (this was instituted to reduce spam).
     

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    Last edited: Sep 29, 2005

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