FAQ Maintainers Mailing List
Re: [faq-maintainers] Changing an E-mail address

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From: Nick Boalch (N.G.Boalch@durham.ac.uk)
Date: Tue Nov 20 2001 - 09:08:55 CST


Christopher Lott wrote:

> I would like to warp my "From" address in the version stored and
> posted from MIT to something like "lott at host dot com" as my
> (possibly futile) attempt of reducing the volume of spam that I
> receive daily. Does anyone have any experience with this? Do
> naive visitors get very confused by this? Thanks in advance for your
> comments.

I don't think we have a definite policy on this, although maybe it's about
time that we did.

Personally I don't like it. I don't like it for several reasons. Firstly
it makes it very difficult for people to reply to your messages. I for
one almost never look at the From header of a message I'm replying to
or the To header of a message I'm sending, so the first I spot of a
munged From header is when the message bounces. Often I then can't be
bothered to figure out the real address, which is a shame. Secondly it
doesn't really help, spam agents are clever enough to decode email
addresses camouflaged in the way you propose.

I tend to say that you should be able to use whatever From header you
like in your FAQ; it's yours, after all. However, it should really be
at least syntactically correct, i.e. not:

      From: Christopher Lott <lott at ainaz dot pair dot com>

but something like:

      From: Christopher Lott <lott@ainax.pair.com.invalid>

Also, we at news-answers-request /must/ know a real email address where
you can be contacted. This would be stored in our own records, which
aren't publically accessible.

Nick

-- 
The pen is mightier than the sword, you claim. Very well, get out your
pens, essay writers, and prepare to have your logic tested by steel!
(The League Against Tedium)

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