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2006: The Year Of Spam!

From 1997 to 2003 I had the same email address. By the end of its life this address was receiving between 50 and 100 spam messages per day. Admittedly I was rather reckless with it, I posted it to newsgroups, had it on my websites, signed up for newsletters and more! Now I have 2 new addresses, one I give to family, and the other I give to businesses. In the time these two have been active, I have only received spam to the business email. So one of these reputable companies HAS given/sold my address to spammers. We all know that spam email has become more of a problem, but how easy is it to get onto a spammers hit list? Lets find out. On the first of January 2006 I used up one of my spare mail boxes by creating a virgin email account. On one of my websites I hid the address in a "mailto:" link. The link was not visible to human visitors. I also deactivated the bad bot list in the .htaccess file. The bad bot list blocks known undesirable automatic browsing robots designed to harvest email addresses (amongst other things). The new email has never been used. So the only way I can get spam sent to this email address is if somebody sends an email harvester around my website. Although, the harvester crew may sell the address to a third party. Either way they cannot say, in their defence, I signed up for it. Thus breaking anti-spamming laws in many countries. This experiment will run throughout 2006, the spam received will be made available for your viewing pleasure. I will remove any email addresses (also images and HTML tags), after all we don't want the spammers spamming themselves once their harvesters hit this site! Click here and let the fun begin.