I don't think I'm that hard to find. A search of Google for "David Muir" Jordanhill throws up plenty of possibilities (721 when I tried it a minute ago). At least three of the links on the first page of results display my email address. (The first hit is a very old personal page which I must edit or delete soon... however my official page isn't much more up to date!)
So, I think I'm easy to find but a couple of people recently complained that they didn't know my email address. For the benefit of these people, and anybody else who cares, here it is as a mailto link: d.d.muir. I've also added a mailto to the sidebar (in the EdCompBlog Stuff section) so it should be easy to find from now on.
I thought carefully before putting my email here. I originally typed it in as d.d.muir [at] strath.ac.uk, however I decided this was silly because A) as I said above, it is already displayed on other pages and B) I already get a bucket load of spam anyway! I'd like to ask any techie-types reading this if putting an email address in the form of a mailto link is better than just typing it in? Will spambots find it just as easily? Answers on a comment postcard please.
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4 comments:
The chances are that it will actually make it easier for bots to find it. Mailto links were one of the first things they looked for, and nowadays if a webpage has a mailto link it is almost definitely a real email address compared to some text that happens to have an @ sign in it.
Hi David,
So much spam about now. I think once your mail is on one spammers list it ends up in them all.
I sometimes javascript encode emails like this(not sure if this will work in blogger):
<script language="JavaScript" type="text/javascript">
<!--
document.write('<a href="mailto:' + 'john@sandaigprimary.co.uk' + '">' +'John' + '</a>');
// -->
</script>
but I have no idea if it works, it probably only fools the stupid bots;-)
This online form might be better:
http://automaticlabs.com/products/enkoderform/
Thanks Stuart and John
Yes... I figured that since the spammers already knew and abused my Strathclyde email I might as well display it in a way that made it easier for "real" people to use. If it makes it easier for spammers too, I can't get much worse off than I am already. :-)
Nova... I'm shocked at you. Take 100 lines too: "I must not forget the power of Google" :-)
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