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FEEDBACK

If you have any feedback, including questions or editorial concerns, you can email me at joelATemailDOTuncDOTedu. Just make the obvious changes.

What's this AT DOT DOT stuff all about?
Why I did such a thing to my email address in the first place is a spam-avoidance tip. Automated programs, generally referred to as spiders or robots, scour the web looking for information from web pages. Search engines such as Google use them to collect pages so users can find the information on your page. Spammers use them to search for email address in the form of somebody@thisorthat.com. By simply changing the @ and the .'s, we defeat the limited abilities of most of them. In truth, some of the latest sophisticated spiders may now get around the AT and the DOT because it has become a common practice. Nevertheless, this will still keep the spam volume down. You lock your car door even though someone can just break the window and grab something out of it, right?

Advanced tip: do a search on 'hiding email addresses in scripts' and you'll find more ways to hide the email address from spammers.

Whatever way you choose, don't put your normal email address out there on any of your web pages unless you really trust your spam filter (now that you have one). Alternatively, you could also provide a spam address as discussed previously. But remember that you have to check it more often for legitimate emails from random folks on the web... and those random-comment might emails look like spam among all your other spam.

I hope you find this information useful. I'd be happy to hear what you think. Good luck in securing your computer!