Tag: spam

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I’ve started to get comments on this blog that I figure are probably AI-written spam, but are sufficiently well-written and sufficiently on-topic that I can’t tell for sure.

I hate the idea of giving spam a place on my site. But I used to really enjoy the discussions in my comment space, back when people did that sort of thing. This leaves me conflicted about what to do. I’m seriously considering turning off comments, and just letting the discussion move into social media. (You can see my social media accounts, if you want to tag me any any response you make. That page also has other ways to contact me.)

I’d be interested to hear from anyone who thinks blog comments are still a good way to do things, and wants to advocate for me keeping the site comments open.

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I’m with Cory Doctorow here: Keeping an email address secret won’t hide it from spambots.

When I had to change email addresses a couple of years back, I considered not posting the new address on my site, to keep the spambots from harvesting it. (My previous email address had been published before there even was spam, so keeping it secret from spammers had never been an option.)

In the end, though, I decided—just as Cory has—that there’s no point. The benefits are very small (the spammers will get your email address anyway), and the costs are significant (all your correspondants have to go through extra work to track down and de-obfuscate your email address).

In the end I did make one concession to the spambots. My email address is no longer in the footer of every page, the way it used to be. Now it just appears in my “contact” page (linked to from the sidebar). That hides it from the very most lazy spambots (which seems to be a large fraction of them). But my email address is right there as a clickable mailto link. Not obfuscated. Not presented as an image. Not hidden behind a contact form.

If you’ve got something you want to say to me, send me some email!