For the life of the Internet, the art of protecting online e-mail addresses has rested upon the ability of web developers to come up with effective ways to sort man from machine.  In short, a CAPTCHA.

If a machine can identify and grab your e-mail address, you will become a target for SPAM - but removing your e-mail altogether is not an option if you want to provide legitimate clients and leads with a way to reach you without having to leave their computer.

When I first started looking at website code (back when a 28.8 baud audio modem was state of …

SPAM is the ultimate form of shotgun marketing.  Most SPAM marketers expect fewer than 1 in 5000 e-mail recipients to ever follow one of their links (and less still to actually buy the product advertised on the other side).  In order to support such an inaccurate form of marketing, spammers need to build up huge pools of e-mail addresses at very little cost.

That’s where e-mail spam-bots come in.  According to Wikipedia:
E-mail spambots harvest e-mail addresses from the Internet in order to build mailing lists for sending unsolicited e-mail, also known as spam. Such spambots are web crawlers that can gather …

You’re working with your web developer and you’ve determined that not all your content is for everyone: maybe you want your site to have added value for members; perhaps you handle medical, financial, or other sensitive documents; it could be one of your protections against SPAM bots; it may even be that you like hiding “Easter Eggs” for customers who gather promotional codes from elsewhere in your marketing campaign.

Whatever your reason is for partitioning off a section of your website, you need to decide how secure it will be.

One for All

At first blush …

This week I continue my series on e-mail deliverability inspired by the Lyris Inc panel featuring Michael Kelly of Click Mail Marketing, Craig Spiezie of the Online Trust Alliance, and David Fowler of Lyris Technologies.

In the Beginning

When the internet began, it was dominated by academic and government agencies.  Such agencies had little reason to hide their own identities or mimic the identities of others.  As a result, a system was built that made it easy to apply domain names (like @stanford.edu or @whitehouse.gov) as …

As I mention in, “Who is That on Your Website: Man or Machine,” a CAPTCHA is any automated process designed to differentiate between human and computerized posters.

CAPTCHA is especially useful for protecting your online forms, though it can also be helpful in keeping spammers from hijacking your blog, forum, or sign-up procedures.

Depending on your security needs, different kinds of CAPTCHA may be preferable.

Pre-built CAPTCHA

If there is a reason why someone would want to create multiple accounts on your page or frequently access some of your restricted information, you will want CAPTCHA which is harder to …

Given the choice between having a human visit your website and having a machine visit your website, you would probably prefer the human.

Humans are more likely to be responsible for purchasing choices, humans are more capable of understanding what you write and coming up with reasoned replies, and humans are more likely to generate original content of their own.

Unfortunately, since computers are themselves a form of machine, you can’t just forbid all contact from other machines or you would never have anyone visit your site.

The Turing Test

Before the first computers were ever built, Alan Turing theorized that it would eventually …

We are all tired of spammers finding our email addresses and sending us junk email. Even if you have a good spam filter in your email account, these spam messages always get through.

I’ve heard clients getting so frustrated that they ask their web developers to remove email addresses from all pages of their websites. Of course this works… but at the expense of the end user.

Did you know that you can protect your email address and still use it on your site?

Spammers look at the code behind the email address. In code, xxx@marissaberger.com looks like “<a href=”mailto:xxx@marissaberger.com”>. Spammers basically order …

If your website has an unprotected contact form, sign-up form or guestbook, you are asking for trouble. Websites large and small, old and new, popular and rarely visited—all are at risk. You need to protect the data your clients provide!

What is the problem?
Internet robots (aka “bots”) find web forms and maliciously interfere with them. Bots can send thousands of spam emails through otherwise respectable web forms. Bots can also fill in the forms, signing up for e-mails, and even ordering the services and products you offer. Some bots use virus-laden attachments to get into forms to steal users’ passwords and …