Why E-Mail on the internet doesn’t really work

29th April 2024

I decided to set up a website E-Mail address today - something I’ve wanted to do for a while. You can now E-Mail me here. One of the things I had to consider whilst doing so was the ever-present problem of SPAM.

SPAM filters are amazing as compared to what they used to be, in fact I quite simply cannot remember the last time I even saw a junk E-Mail! Admittedly, I am incredibly careful about who gets my address, and how long they may keep it for, even going so far as to set up relay and alias addresses for less reputable institutions. The point stands though: my junk folder still contains the messages, I just never have to look at them.

However, adding your E-Mail address on to a public website like I have here causes some problems with this. There are computers which exist for the sole purpose of scouring websites for E-Mail addresses, then firing as much junk at them as they can manage. I do not wish to endure this problem, and have thus set up a rather simple spam filter which I call “nospam”.

The idea is simple: the E-Mail program looks at every single message it receives, checks if the subject line contains the phrase “nospam” and if it does not, the message is instantly deleted. There is a message on the website telling you to add “nospam” to your subject line, and as these computers simply scour E-Mail addresses, and not convoluted instructions like these, and so it seems to work.

And thus, if you wish to get in contact, please append to your message subject line the word “nospam”.

NB: This problem only affects me, so by sending me an E-Mail, you won’t be flooded with SPAM!


Tagged as: web email programming