The Doggy Diaries... gone to the dogs!

Thankfully I haven't had to worry about this with Blogger - yet. That's one reason I haven't "upgraded" to a more sophisticated blog program. I do worry about having to put my e-mail addy on blogs - do you think it could end up being a problem?

Don't you just love spammers? They should all be killed!

Kristi, whenever you put your email address anywhere on the Internet, the potential exists for someone to harvest it and spam you. The key to reducing spam, in my opinion, is to make your address as difficult to harvest as possible so that spammers will leave you alone in search of easier prey.

You'll notice by hovering your mouse over any of the names of people who comment here on my blog that I do not link directly to anyone's email address. In fact, I have set my comments up as follows.

By default, all commenters must provide a valid email address. This is to prevent anonymous commenting. If the commenter provide both a valid URL and a valid email address, then the link to that person's name (once the comment has been published to the web page) is an encoded link to the commenter's website. The link is encoded to be read by a CGI script that pulls your URL from a database and then forwards you to that URL if you click on the commenter's name. Never will the URL be publicly displayed.

If the commenter provides a valid email address but does not have a URL, then the logic has been coded to display the commenter's name without a link to their email address. I have deliberately left off my URL when adding this comment so you will see that there is no link around my name and no indication of what my email address is.

Basically, what I am saying is that the only person who will ever know your email address when you post a comment to my blog is me. I cannot speak for other bloggers. Each person sets up their commenting system differently.

In the absence of knowing how a person has set up their commenting system (and whether or not they display email addresses), I would suggest you place some sort of discernable text that must be removed by anyone wishing to email you ... e.g., myemail[REMOVE-THIS]@yahoo.com. This way, spambot email harvestors won't get a valid email address, but human readers will know to remove the [REMOVE-THIS] from the email address before contacting you.

Ahh, so that's how it works. :) I knew there must be some trick to it or spammers would go nuts with blog comments.

I have received almost no spam at all to my domain address, and it isn't my main address anyway so I could change it if I wanted to. I agree with Bruce - spammers should all be killed. But let's flog them publicly first and make them endure about 48 hours straight of Viagra ads. :)