I don't like spam!   -   An ounce of Prevention:  

Did you know that there are robots that roam the net, following links from site to site?   In the case of Search Engines, that is how some of them find and index new sites.  The problem is that some of those robots grab email addresses from websites, email signatures and usenet posts.    They then add those addresses to spam lists, which they can use, or sell to other spammers.  Email addresses are easy to find, free for the taking.

What can I do to protect myself? 

There are three options:

1.  Don't put your email address on your website, or in Usenet posts.

2.  Modify the email address on your site - you won't get nearly as much garbage email.  The problem with this method is that some folks don't understand it, so you will miss out on some emails.

Old:  webmaster@yoursite.com  [add me to your list, oh Spammers!]
  
New:  webmaster<nospam>@yoursite.com  [cloak of invisibility engaged!] 


   
Want to throw a punch?   -   A pound of cure:   

What can be done?  Well, the robots aren't human, and can be tricked.   They can't verify every address they gather (millions of them!) so they'll add anything that looks like an address to their list.   

This does two things: 

It ruins the value of the list, because the list is full of false addresses.  This wastes the spammer's time and money, by sending mail that won't be received.

The credibility of the spammer is damaged.  They sell their lists based on expected returns, just like any other advertising.  If their list contains a bunch of false addresses, the response rate will be much lower.   This makes spamming less effective, and less profitable.

If you want to contribute to the anti-spam campaign, add a page like this one to your site (copyright is released for this page) or link to this page.   If you feel it doesn't fit into your site's theme, you can still help. Linking to this page in any way (even inconspicuously) will send any spam-bots (but not your visitors) that happen across your site over here, where they will then happily gobble the  addresses below. 
  

Links for the spam-bots.  Yum.

Our spam-bait page    Another one...    yet another...   one more...    and last but not least, let's send 'em to Yahoo's nasty directory of spam bait - full of fun! 

  Didn't that feel good?!