How do I… free my address from spam?

How do I … create a spam-proof e-mail address?

There is a way, using an online tool, of posting your e-mail address on Web sites or in your outgoing messages so that it won’t be found by spam bots and misused later.

It is at http://gsig.brightdev.com/ index.php, and it creates a graphic badge that holds your e-mail address. Just insert your address, then cut and paste the badge produced there into your Web posts or your outgoing e-mail client.

Spam bots won’t be able to read the address, as it’s buried inside the image. This works only with Gmail, Hotmail, MSN and AOL, at present.

Don’t like that approach? One other solution – at www.wbwip.com/wbw/ emailencoder.html – takes your ascii e-mail characters and renders them as hexadecimal numbers. It’s a weird solution: you cut your address into the encoder and it pumps it out in a string of 109 characters.

If you place those 109 characters on a Web page, any Web browser that later opens the page will see your original address. Complicated, but hey, it works.