On 28 Mar 2003, at 14:51, jim barchuk wrote:

> Hi David!
> 
> On Thu, 27 Mar 2003, David Jones wrote:
> 
> > On 27 Mar 2003, at 20:56, jim barchuk wrote:
> 
> > > Yeah that's fine for initial contact, but Shelley
> > > mentioned 'business account' 'correspondence' which I
> > > take to mean everyday email. Can you *imagine* how
> > > annoying it'd be to have to turn on a browser, load a
> > > web site, and copy/paste previous email into it just
> > > for common email conversation? Yuck.  :)
> > 
> > Once past the initial contact point, presumably a real
> > person at the client's place is corresponding with a
> > real person at the contact's end of things. At that
> > point, the mail wouldn't be going through a web form at
> > all, but going throught the respective party's normal
> > mail client.
> 
> Yes, sounds like a Real Nice Idea. [tm] But...
> 
> > The point about using the web form in the first place is
> > you can enable incoming mail correspondence without
> > exposing any actual email address on the web site where
> > a spambot can grab it.
> 
> The 'first place' is already past. It's already been
> posted and harvested and that's it. The only option is to
> discontinue the account which of course is not an option
> for them.

You could use smart spam filtering software like Popfile 
to help keep the spam out of the face of whomever is 
answering the info@ address ... but, yeah, standard 
addresses like that get targetted readily. Here at work, 
we have an address that goes out to all users on our 
system ... and had to restrict send access for that alias 
because spammers were blindly sending mail to 
"users@" and getting it to everyone ... 

Maybe it's time to add some other addresses, with less 
standard sounding names, like "sales-info", and phase 
out using the existing "info" type address.

> Regardless, there *is* no 'first place,' given the totally
> common info@. I have never posted info@ or webmaster@
> anywhere on the net, in any form, yet I still get email
> for them every day. Why? Because I have a public domain
> name, and they are common addresses, so the spammers try
> it.

That they do, that they do.

David
dvjones(at)ksbe.edu
 

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