Is Scoble teaching bad practices?

Today on a few minutes of relax between my works I've checked my Blog's list and, when reading Scoble's blog, I've seen this post:

You can find mine pretty easily. Just go to Google or MSN or Yahoo and type:

Scoble email

And you’ll find it within the first few links. Why? Cause I put my email on my home page. It’s amazing how hard many bloggers make it to find their email address. I should just be able to go to your home page and search for the @ character and find your email address.

Is it a bad dream or what I'm reading is the terrible reality?  Is Scoble working for a spam company?

Please please please DON'T place your email address in clear text on your web page or blog!! This is a terrible "worst practice" in the actual era, where spam is a terrible phenomenon to fight.

Spam bots are so widespread and if you have an email address in clear text on a page, it will be reached easily and it will be targeted soon. Are you a fan of Viagra, Cialis, Poker and similar? So go with the Scoble's idea...

Do you hate receiving spam on your email instead? Then go for another solution: make your email address visible, understandable for who wants to contact you, but masked (use a bitmap with your address or mask it with extra characters). Remember that it's a terrible idea placing your email address visible on a search engine, so make attention also when you post on newsgroups or forums (search engines are able to index all their contents).

Why Scoble has launch this orrible idea? No words about it... it's certainly a right person but this time he has undoubtely failed.

Print | posted on Tuesday, January 31, 2006 5:04 PM

Comments on this post

# re: Is Scoble teaching bad practices?

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Scoble is probably using Super Spam filtering extension in Outlook 12. :-)
Left by Dave Burke on Jan 31, 2006 3:03 PM

# re: Is Scoble teaching bad practices?

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Yes it's possible However his email domain is microsoft.com so I can imagine that, if Scoble is saying these words, antispam filters in Microsoft are working really good!
Left by Stefano Demiliani on Jan 31, 2006 3:08 PM

# re: Is Scoble teaching bad practices?

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Agreed on those good working antispam filters at Microsoft, my friend!
Left by Dave Burke on Feb 01, 2006 1:16 AM

# re: Is Scoble teaching bad practices?

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I agree with the perfect spam filters at microsoft. I have a vendor account there, and I received just *zero* spam in the last two years
Left by miguel jimenez on Feb 01, 2006 8:47 AM

# re: Is Scoble teaching bad practices?

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Yes, I think so... Scoble seems not understand too much how dangerous could be to place an email address in clear text on a page and having it indexed on a search engine. Thanks to Microsoft's internal antispam filters I think.
Left by Stefano Demiliani on Feb 01, 2006 8:31 PM

# re: Is Scoble teaching bad practices?

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No, I don't think he is teaching bad practice because the problem with spam is not having your email published its having that publication abused.

At an individual level yes, you have to be aware of the consequences so in that sense you'd be right but equally my email address (which I've had for a very long time) is already so thoroughly spammed that publishing it again isn't going to make any difference - the solution to the problem lies elsewhere.
Left by Murphy on Feb 02, 2006 12:22 PM

# re: Is Scoble teaching bad practices?

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Ok, maybe the solution lies elsewhere, but protect a possible new spam target it's a must to do I think.
Actually this is a clear fact under the eyes: try to place your email address in clear on a forum or a site indexed by Google and check your emails in the next days... you we'll see what happens!
Left by Stefano Demiliani on Feb 02, 2006 6:09 PM

# re: Is Scoble teaching bad practices?

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Actually I don't consider it bad practice. True, there are little bots everywhere just combing the web, newsgroups, etc. for new email addresses to send spam to.

Years ago I used the typical "me at this.com" or "meNO@SPAMdomain.com" but after awhile it was just a pain.

For the last 6 years I just use my open email address. Do I get more spam? Not really. Between filters on my ISP provider, my firewall, and Outlook block most of it. Some gets through but I just ignore it. That's my preference but YMMV.
Left by Bil Simser on Feb 09, 2006 12:49 PM

# re: Is Scoble teaching bad practices?

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ISP antispam filters is actually what all of us wants from providers, but unfortunately there are lots of them that don't understand the problem and their mail server are unprotected. Terrible but it's true!
Left by Stefano Demiliani on Feb 09, 2006 12:59 PM

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