What's the down side of having your e-mail address public on Anaswerbag? Have you had any bad experiences?
by 
CleverlyPut
ANSWERS: 10
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I haven't had a problem with this -- the only people who've sent me e-mail are people I like. However, I do recommend that you MASK your address in some way which prevents "web scraping" robots from harvesting it automatically for use in spam databases. The way I do this is to spell it like this: stableboy at ivsds dot com A human can reassemble this into a meaningful form, but the robots generally don't recognize it.
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I haven't had any bad experiences myself, but there was someone that wasn't rating me fairly and I manage to send them a polite but still rather nasty email telling them to stop, due to their email address being public here on answerbag. But that's pretty much it.
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Hackers, phishers and robot sweepers. Now you know why I have no information in my profile.
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Okay, first of all, while I do have my email address available on my profile, it is an anonymous account that I can delete at a whim. So I don't really care whether it gets spammed. This email address is specifically for my use here on Answerbag, and whatever happens, happens. (BTW, you guys aren't EVER getting my REAL email addy...lol!) Second, in spite of all, no one's ever bothered to actually e-mail me (apparently not even the spammers or the nasty people!) ... :-(
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If I cared about that particular mailbox, I wouldn't have posted the address. And if it gets to be too much of a hassle, I have X others where X > enough.
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I have had my e-mail listed since I first came here, and have yet to see a downside. I have made many new "pen-pals", recieved many "thank-you's" and have yet to recieve anything I would consider spam as a result of posting it.
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I have had mine visible, but have NEVER received an email. No thank yous, nothing telling me to "go to Hell", nothing.
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Well I guess I'm the odd one out! I receive between 5 and 15 spam emails a day. And that is without making my e-mail address public. I just signed up for various website accounts. Even my ISP spam filter doesn't catch them all. It does spot most and appends 'SPAM' into the Title. I never respond to SPAM or PHISHING because that merely confirms an active address.
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One main problem I have had in the past, especially because I have several websites and used to have my email address on them as a hot link, is that it is 'found' by email searching bots and then you start getting lots of spam from everywhere. So now I'm very careful where I put it and in what form I do. I may add SHOES in the addy and then put below it Please Remove Shoes before emailing. It' just safer that way. At it's worst I was getting 40-50 spam a day!
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I've had my e-mail publicly posted ever since I've had one to post, and I've yet to regret that decision. I've actually gotten very little Answerbag related e-mail other than contact from a few close friends that I met here.
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