Strange Email addresses
By Toby Allen
Wednesday, January 07, 2004
I recently set up a email notification system for a website I run. The website is a job advertising site which allows people to add their email address to a list, and then they recieve an email about new jobs at an interval they choose. I've noticed a strange thing happening.
For people who are not computer savvy, this can be a daunting experience. They have been told by all the magazines and newspapers they have read that you should not let your real email address be published on a website, cos you'll get lots of spam, which is true. However these people do not unfortunatley draw the distinction between entering an email address which will be published on a website (such as posting to an online forum, or contributing to a newsgroup), and entering your email address for automated email notification.
So when I send out email notifications of new positions on the website (which not surprisingly happens automagically) I get a whole raft of returned emails for people who have written "bob at hotmail dot com" or John@mydomain.butnotthisbit.co.uk. This is really annoying. I have to go in and check for any funny email addresses. I guess I can't really blame the people though, if it wasnt for spam none of this cicanery would be necessary.
The other thing which is quite interesting, is peoples inability to enter their email addresses correctly. I guess thats why most websites now have an email validation field.
The only solution I guess is just to go and put up a polite notice asking people to enter their correct email address, and check it twice (like santa).