Stop spam and personal data capture

Free email encoding for websites and blogs:

Any email address entered on this blog is converted automatically into a code designed to foil spam-bots.

This is done using the WP Email Encoder Bundle

It comes with the form below. You can use this to generate an encoded email address, eg. to embed in your own website or blog:

[email_encoder_form]

There are many free email encoders like this one on the internet.

 

Free personal url to hide your email: scr.im

“Leaving your email as plain text in forums, on Twitter or on classified sites makes you an easy spam target: spam robots and email harvesters constantly browse these sites to collect new victim emails.”

This is my “scrimmed” email address for this website, if you would like to select it to see how it works: i…@s…e.net

There might be other free services like scr.im – but I rather like ladybirds.

Free disposable email system: Gishpuppy

With Gishpuppy, you use a different Gishpuppy email address for every registration. If spammers find one of your Gishpuppy addresses, you can easily tell which one you need to “deactivate”. If you want to stay registered with that company or email list, it is ridiculously easy to generate a new Gishpuppy address. Then, just change the Gishpuppy email address that you registered, ie. the one that is getting spammed, to the new one that Gishpuppy has given you for that site.

If you have been using strategies like multiple Yahoo! aliases, you will find Gishpuppy much quicker and less complicated to manage. It is a lot harder to explain how Gishpuppy works than it is to use it. Luckily, the Gishpuppy people are better at explaining it than me: Gishpuppy details.

If your real email address is already being spammed, start swapping your existing email address registrations for Gishpuppy email addresses before it gets even worse.

There are other free services like this on the internet. I have been using Gishpuppy for nearly 10 years and found it very reliable. In that time I have acquired over 360 Gishpuppy email addresses. These have redirected emails to nine different email addresses.

The option of registering more than one “destination” email address with Gishpuppy has been a great boon when workplace email addresses have changed. It is very easy to point an existing Gishpuppy address at a new “destination” address.

This service is named after Gish, a cute Guide Dog puppy.

Gishpuppy is for when you DO want to register with a site or service.

The next service is for when you want to make one-off or occasional visits to a site and do NOT want to register.

 

Avoid registering for “one off” visits: BugMeNot

Bypass compulsory registration: find and share logins for websites that force you to register.

Again, there are other free services like this one. They are all based on pooling “log ins” for sites such as on-line Newspapers, ie. that have free registration but demand a mass of personal data in exchange for access.

BugMeNot and similar services all rely on cooperation, share and share-alike – and good behaviour on the part of anonymous participants. Obviously, you do not need to register to use BugMeNot – here is the very short and simple BugMeNot Tutorial.

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ps. Free but donations requested?

On many sites that offer free services and tools, you might see a polite request for a small donation if you have found the service or tool valuable.  Most free services and tools are provided by volunteers in their “spare” time.  Requests will usually state the reason for asking for a donation, eg. help to pay for web space, time for further development, to hire extra help maintaining or improving the service.  Please give consideration to such requests. The donations reported globally are often pitifully small and these good-geeks are all that stand between us and the forces of evil organised crime that are out to steal our cash!

pps. Gishpuppy Fund-raiser

Well this blog-post and that ps were more timely than I realised.

I had better start tweeting this next: http://www.indiegogo.com/projects/224148/