sharing e mails

[wendilla]

just read on ab editors blog that email addresses are now allowed to be posted on ab . what do you think of this.

[sp1814]

Sensible idea. Programs called 'spiders' sniff out email addresses used to access chat rooms and special interest forums. These addresses are harvested, then the spiders are useds to bombard these with spam.

[wendilla]

have you misread my question it says emails are now allowed

[WaldoMcFroog]

I wonder what happens if you encode them as ASCII?

Let's see...

mrkneejerk@dailymailisland.co.uk

[WaldoMcFroog]

Ah, excellent... Gibberish!

Well, given that's the case, I wouldn't do it unless I was using a meaningless hotmail account I'd set up specifically for the purpose. You'd be mad to do otherwise - as sp1814 says, you're asking for spam galore.

[sp1814]

D'Oh - I read it as "not allowed".

Better go to Betterspecs.

[sp1814]

There is a way of writing your email and keeping to safe. If you wanted to give it out on a forum, you could write "john.smith at yahoo.com' which cannot be read by spiders, but humans can read it and understand it.

[noxlumos]

Great idea:) At long last we're being treated like grown ups. As mentioned above though don't give out a "real" email address that's important to you, just a yahoo or freebie one that you use for public witterings:) I'm really pleased at this as I think it gives people the chance to make contact more privately and means likeminded people can chat amongst themselves as it were:)

[stoo_pid]

so what's to stop anyone pretending to be someone that they're not & posting someone else's email address?

[Ward-Minter]

what do you mean???

my email address [email protected]

[Drisgirl]

pmsl @ wm

[wendilla]

Thanks all for your replies and yes I would be very wary in giving mine out and as you say WaldoMcFroog yes best use another and stoo_pid you have got a good point too. thanks

[johnlambert]

I thought Ward-Minter's email was [email protected]

[Booldawg]

who cares? most 'net wise' people will have an email address they use solely for the purpose of subscribing to chat rooms, messageboards etc. If it gets heavily spammed or abused you dont mind as it isnt really used as a 'proper' mail address.

[WoWo]

"you could write "john.smith at yahoo.com' which cannot be read by spiders"

I could write a bit of code which could read that in about 2 minuntes.

[undercovers]

think it might start messing with the concept of the AB abit as discussion of topic may start to occur by email instead of a forum where we can all read it ... actually maybe thats not such a bad thing for some of our most favoured topics of discussion

[smudge]

I already receive many emails a day from friends & family, so I wouldn't want to disclose my email address on AB for complete strangers!

Thanks anyway Ed.

[SteveD]

It would be better if AB members could send a private message to each other via AB. They could then exchange e-mail addresses if they wanted to without the addresses being displayed for all to see. This is common on other forums (e;g. FriendsReunited).

[gessoo]

SteveD. I totally agree with you. If AB Ed could be used as a go between then there would be no problems. Just a message via contact us with 'please send my email address to.................' should suffice, and it wouldn't take a lot of work either.

[jno]

nice as it is to be treated as a grownup, not everyone on the site is. Perhaps if anyone sees a younger user has given out an email address, it might be advisable to report it anyway? It probably won't ever happen, but...

[smudge]

I totally agree with you SteveD, it would be a much safer way of contacting other ABer's. However, I wonder what the Ed would think of taking on the extra work involved?

(A similar set up to F/R would be a great idea too, but then you do have to pay �7.50 p.a. for the priviledge of contacting 'old' friends).