Busy — Tue, 28 Mar 2006 10:07:21 +0000

I had a spam today for test@mydomain

James — Tue, 28 Mar 2006 08:17:37 +0000

I wouldn't worry about email on sites as long as your domain server's spam protection is good.

demonhale — Tue, 28 Mar 2006 03:29:38 +0000

Yup Tim, pretty much people attending IT seminars like to answer this questionnaires about the Web... Give it a try...

timjpriebe — Mon, 27 Mar 2006 13:47:11 +0000

A study, huh, Demonhale... That's actually a pretty good idea. Maybe I should do some sort of study on how people surf the web, with this as one of the questions.

Busy — Sat, 25 Mar 2006 10:35:24 +0000

To add a spin on this topic.

It seems a mailto tag is more prefered, BUT, what if the email was a hotmail, yahoo, gmail account instead of the websites domain name, would that stop you from emailing the person?
Me personally wont email throw away (free) email addresses for the spam reason, even some forms I check see if it has a mailto method.

demonhale — Sat, 25 Mar 2006 03:25:45 +0000

hey I remember that I did somekind of research a while back with the limits set at 20 to 50 age group at a local workshop I had, I gave them questionnaires to fill-up asking how do they usually contact a websites admin/owner... about 30% said after seeing a visible mail address wether an image or text, they open there mail client and copy the address to mail them... about 60% said they look for a mailform, and the remaining 10% is mixed between the mailto and the write a letter, and call if theres a number displayed... There were about 500 participants... Just an insight...

Megan — Fri, 24 Mar 2006 14:56:52 +0000

Good points, starter. I read this in an accessibility article recently:

Quote: Why should your visitors have to go through a multi-step sign-up process to ask you a question? It’s your problem when you get spammed—not theirs. Yes, it does frustrate the occasional prankster and gives you a chance to point out help devices such as your FAQ section, but it also means the visitors who really need to contact you have to go through a lot more steps than they should have to. How many times have you hung up the telephone in frustration after listening to all the options of an automated system?

From: http://www.digital-web.com/articles/seven_accessibility_mistakes_part_2/

starter — Fri, 24 Mar 2006 14:47:05 +0000

This post kinda took my interest as I was pondering over this a few months back, If there was someone who can develope a magic bullet solution that can make the mailto problem disappear overnight would be great, but since there isn't one around I have to say that I would go with approachability rather then worrying about spams, at the end of the day its all about communications, I rather look for some alternative software to combat my junk mail rather then risk losing potential contacts or clients, my junk mail filter normally takes care of about 25-40% of the problem, but at least I dont worry about if someone is not going to contact me because they couldnt be bothered to type in my email address.

(lets face it, most people who do contact you have no idea why you just have a text link rather then a straight mailto and are probably not interested wanting to know)

Busy — Fri, 17 Mar 2006 21:03:28 +0000

thats not even the tip of the iceberg I'm afriad Steve40.
I block the ones that hit my sites, to date I have about 250 blocked via .htaccess. Do a search for 'perfect ban list' (no quotes), I believe they are still doing a combined one are up to at least 750 if not over a 1000 already.
Also remember your robots file is server load, if you have hundreds of blocks it will slow you down as every bot will read it each time, bad bots read it to find stuff they shouldn't

In some ways a contact form is like putting a mob ph number in a sales ad, it cuts down the time wasters

steve40 — Fri, 17 Mar 2006 15:05:24 +0000

Updated robots Txt file, script or whatever you want to call it. This includes all of the presently known bots.

User-agent: Titan
Disallow: /

User-agent: EmailCollector
Disallow: /

User-agent: EmailSiphon
Disallow: /

User-agent: EmailWolf
Disallow: /

User-agent: ExtractorPro
Disallow: /

User-agent: fastlwspider
Disallow: /

User-agent: findEmail
Disallow: /

User-agent: SurfWalker
Disallow: /

User-agent: Telesoft
Disallow: /

User-agent: Zeus.*Webster Pro
Disallow: /

User-agent: ^[DFPS]Surf\d\d[a-z]
Disallow: /

User-agent: ^[DFPS]Browse \d\.\d[a-z]
Disallow: /