they are selling your email address to spammers
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beware, they are selling your email address to spammers, breaking the law.
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We don’t sell email addresses to anyone. What gave you that idea?
you sold my address. its not an idea, its a fact.
people beware, you will get spam if you give them a valid e-mail address.Why do you think we sold your address?
because my e-mail address is not public, i only gave it to you when i registered for akismet api key and 2 days later i got spam e-mail. i have never received spam before and there was no other way of spammers having my email address.
Your email address is public. It’s listed in plain text on the Contact page of your website.
as i told Greg Stewart-some guy sending email in behalf of Akismet, my website is not indexed.
1. the spam i got is automated. no robot spammer are that smart to randomly going to websites and substract and use the contact e-mail address.
2. the only visitor to my site then was that Greg Stewart from Akismet [personal details removed from public forum] he went to my contact page just one minute before sending me e-mail 17:08 and e-mail from him was at 17:09.
now there is another visitor to my site [personal details removed from public forum]. that would be you, went to my contact page, just like Greg did, 19 minutes before replying here.- This reply was modified 7 years, 10 months ago by James Huff. Reason: personal details removed from public forum
no robot spammer are that smart to randomly going to websites and substract and use the contact e-mail address.
Every spambot is that smart.
oh really? so why i got no visit?
Depending on what you’re using for analytics, bots might not show up since they probably don’t interpret JavaScript or download images.
no robot spammer are that smart to randomly going to websites and substract and use the contact e-mail address.
Just stopping by to note that spam bots making use of publicly listed email addresses is by far not a new development.
Here’s an article from Lifehacker in 2007 about it: http://lifehacker.com/271176/keep-your-email-address-from-spambots-with-text-to-ascii
Here’s an article from The Guardian in 2010 about how obfuscating your email address like that doesn’t do much good, and the spam bots will always find a way to use any publicly listed email address: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2010/dec/21/keeping-email-address-secret-spambots
If you still want to obfuscate your email address, despite the above article, there are several free plugins to choose from: https://wordpress.org/plugins/search.php?q=obfuscate+email
Generally, contact forms are a much better way to offer a public way of being reached without offering your email address up for collection by spam bots: https://wordpress.org/plugins/search.php?type=term&q=contact+form
oh really? so why i got no visit?
Most bots can’t execute JavaScript or load tracking images (which most stats systems use), but also since bot traffic represents a significant amount of traffic on the web, all good stats programs filter out all bots they are aware of. Here are just a few that do:
http://gs.statcounter.com/faq#bots
https://techcrunch.com/2014/07/30/google-analytics-can-now-exclude-traffic-from-known-bots-and-spiders/
http://piwik.org/faq/new-to-piwik/#faq_63
https://en.support.wordpress.com/stats/#views-and-visitors (also applies to Jetpack stats)Additionally, please never post personal identifying information here: https://codex.wordpress.org/Forum_Welcome#The_Bad_Stuff
- This reply was modified 7 years, 10 months ago by James Huff.
wonderful. for so long i havent had any problems with spam, but just 2 days after i gave my email address to Akismet, i suddenly receive spam and now you convinced me its all coincidence. i wonder how bots got my website address. yes, there are ways, just another coincidence i guess.
sorry for posting personal information, i shouldnt do that.
i wonder how bots got my website address.
The same way Google, Bing, and others got it. Sometimes they even get it *from* the search results of Google, Bing, and others.
It’s not a conspiracy, I promise you. Bots wouldn’t exist if they weren’t good at doing their jobs, however deplorable at times.
1. i was sarcastic.
2. i’ve done my bit, share my experience with other users, hope they will read and think twice before acting.
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