Why to Not Have Your Email on a Website

By Bradley Charbonneau | Filed under Email, Help, Spam

I reluctantly have my email listed (plain text name@domain.com) on a business networking site I’m a member of. Here’s what happened.

My email is listed on the site in regular text, so it’s easy for the spammers to collect and add to their databases. Now spam is no fun, but “phishing” is potentially dangerous. See the screen shot below that’s supposedly from Ebay (it’s not) asking me to update my information. If I actually clicked on the link and filled in my information, it’d be giving that info to the spammer/hacker and they’d then have access to my Ebay account. Sure, they could maybe buy a Cabbage Patch doll at my expense, but it’s when you get the phishing scheme email from, say, Wells Fargo, that I’m very concerned.

How do I know the spam was collected from the BNI website? Because that’s the only place where I list my email address as “bni at likoma dot com” (I’m not going to type it out here as that’s just as bad!). So, I know where the spammers got it and I can do something about it. I can block all email to that email address and I can tell that website that they’re being scoured for email addresses (it’s not their fault). This is why I’m a big fan of contact forms.