Homestead mailing list

[Don Bowen <don.bowen AT earthlink.net>]

At 12/15/2004, you wrote:
> <<I heard the other day that well over 50% of Internet email traffic is
> unwanted spam and for many businesses is making email almost useless.>>
>
> I've always been careful in putting my e-mail address out to the world. So
> far, I've not had much -- if any -- spam. I'm not terribly clever, so it's
> not like I'm blocking dreck all on my own. I certainly don't want to be in
> the position of blaming the victim.... but if *I've* managed to escape most
> spam, the rest of you must be doing something... uh, dumb.

I had the same email address since the late 80s and it was all over my web 
sites, in mail lists and newsgroups.  The harvesters started web crawling 
web sites and extracting every address they found, that is how many of us 
got caught.  Once they send an email and it does not bounce, you email 
address takes on a little more value and it is sold.  Newsgroups were a 
prime source and that is where they got the address for the first ever 
piece of spam, the green card spam.

My new method is to use character enities on teh web pages.  I am sure any 
decent web crawling bot writer would have this one figured out but it is a 
try.  The character enities are representations of the ASCII 
characters.  Looking at the web source you do not see the characters to 
trigger a harvest.  Here is mine:

Please email me at <A 
HREF="mailto:&#100;&#111;&#110;&#046;&#098;&#111;&#119;&#101;&#110;&#064;
&#101;&#097;&#114;&#116;&#104;&#108;&#105;&#110;&#107;&#046;&#110;&#101;&#116;?
subject=From the travel 
pages">&#100;&#111;&#110;&#046;&#098;&#111;&#119;&#101;&#110;&#064;
&#101;&#097;&#114;&#116;&#104;&#108;&#105;&#110;&#107;&#046;&#110;&#101;&#116;</a> 

for more information.
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Don Bowen
Awl Knotted Up Woodworking
Valley Center, CA             http://www.braingarage.com