Address Munging FAQ: Spam-Blocking Your Email Address

Address Munging FAQ: Spam-Blocking Your Email Address: "How should I mung my address?

(AOLers! Be sure to read the Instructions for AOL members)

IMPORTANT! Make sure that modifications to your email address do not violate any of the policies of your service provider!



Be creative with your mung, and change it often as well. These steps will prevent harvesters from picking up on patterns, and possibly changing their software to defeat them.



Make it obvious to humans.

DO: yourname(AT)example(DOT)com

DO: yournamZ@ZxamplZ.nZt (Replace Z with E)

DO: yourname@example.invalid

(use ONLY .invalid to do this!)

DO: see_my_sig@for.my.real.address

DON'T: yourname@foo.example.com

If you decide to add a 'spamblock' to your existing address, put it on the right-hand side of the @ sign. This avoids making your provider's email server handle undeliverable mail. Also, you want your mung to affect the rightmost portion of the domain name; if you add something immediately after the @ sign, many times the email will be delivered anyway.

DO: yourname@example-REMOVE_THIS-.com

(be sure to read this!)

DO: yourname@example.invalid

(use ONLY .invalid to do this!)

DON'T: yourname-SPAMBLOCK-@example.com

Tell folks how to de-mung your address somewhere in your message. The signature (sig) that gets added to the end of each message is a good place to do this.

DO: 'To reply via email, remove '-REMOVE-THIS-' from my address.'

DO: 'Real address is myrealname AT example DOT com'

DO: 'Replace all the Z's with E's to reply'

DO: 'Replace 'invalid' with 'net' to reply'

NOTE: DO NOT put a directly usable address in your sig, because many harvesters collect everyt"