Use Scr.im to Trim Spam

Any time you put your email address in plain text on Facebook, Twitter, forums, auction sites, etc.  your email address will be harvested by spam bots that constantly patrol the web. If your email address is whosafraidofspam@not2savvy.org  and you post that on the web, anywhere, on any page, your email address will end up on tons of USBs and CDs and DVDs being sold by dealers who sell email address to spammers.

Spam is big business.  You may think that no one would be stupid enough to fall for products, services, subscriptions and other things being promoted in spam emails. But that’s not true. When spammers send out two hundred million spam emails, and only 50% of them are delivered that’s one hundred million spam emails. And if they only sell something to to .0001% of those who received the spam, that is 10,000 sales.

Let’s say Bozo Peacock is a spammer and this go-around he is selling  “Bee Pollen Healthy U” capsules for $18 per bottle (plus S & H). Calculating… that’s $180,000 gross… not including S & H.

So let’s say the Bee Pollen Healthy U capsules contain nothing but 20 cents worth of filler in a capsule that cost a tenth of a cent. Then Bozo puts 50 pills in a 10 cent plastic bottle he’s spent a total of 35 cents. Let’s say labor and overhead costs are 65 cents per order… Old Bozo Peacock is gonna make $170,000- in profit. That’s 170 large!

But, if Bozo is located in Northwestern Lower Sablovia, the cops might not care what he does… so he may do nothing but collect money and move to Southwestern Lower Sablovia  and do it all again.

Yes, this is just a facetious example… but the numbers are pretty accurate. If you send hundreds of millions of spam emails, someone somewhere is going to buy whatever it is you’re selling. That’s sad but true. When you’re dealing in 100’s of millions even a success rate as low as .0001% can make spammers wealthy. It’s kind of like trolling the ocean with huge nets… you’re bound to catch something.

Wait! Don’t get any ideas! It’s illegal to spam and none of  you who are reading this work or live anywhere near Lower Sablovia where spamming is the main industry…and legal. Besides there are no flights for Lower Sablovia, they don’t have an airport… heck they don’t even have roads.

I digress. It’s important that you never put your email address on any public page. Never put email address in Facebook posts, Twitter Posts,  comments, forums, auction  sites, etc. If you do, you’re just going to set yourself up for more spam. But sometimes you want people to be able to email you and you want to leave an email address on Facebook, a forum post, a comment, etc.

Well now you can, because you can Src.im your email address and post it anywhere without worry.

We’re using a new email address to send our InfoAve Premium Newsletters. If I put that email address here, in plain text, the spammer bots would get it and then more spam would follow, But if I Scr.im it… I could stick it right here and the bots would not be able to harvest it… so in fact, I could put it right here, without fear of ending up on 10,000 spammers banks of email addresses.

Here’s how it works. You go to http://scr.im and you type in the email address you want to, Scr.im.  See?

You can either let Scr.im assign a random address, or choose a custom one like we did above. Then click “Protect my email” and voila ! You get copy & paste links you can use anywhere: Twitter, Facebook, forums, webpages, and more…

Protected!

If you decide you’re going to try to email us at c…@t…..d.net… don’t. It’s only for sending you newsletters. We have “contact us” links in the newsletter you can sue to contact us.

When you use the Scr.im links you’re given and you post it on the web — Facebook, Twitter, forums, whatever — whoever clicks it to send you an email will have to pass a test. It’s simple challenge for humans, a hard challenge for robots. Think of: “That’s one small step for man, one giant leap for a robot.”

Let’s do another. This one is for our Cloudeight address we use as our main contact address. Woe befall us should we ever put our main address on the web… but we can Scr.im it and post it right here. Email us!  See? You can email us but the robots cannot.

When someone clicks the link to “Email us!”, they have to pass a challenge like the one below. It only takes a second for human to figure it out, but for a robot? Not very likely.

By now, you’re either interested or our not. You should be. It’s a great way to be able to post an email address on the web so people can easily contact you, without having your email address gathered up and harvested by spam bots.

One more thing. Let us welcome Mr.Scr.im. He’s going to tell you about his site and service (or maybe it’s Mrs. Scr.im… it’s hard to tell):

Use scr.im to get less spam

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.

Don’t share your email on public sites. Instead, use our free service that will convert your email address (joe@email.com) into a safe and short URL (for instance http://scr.im/joe). People willing to email you will go to this URL that will reveal your email address, after a simple test that automated scripts and bots cannot pass.

Don’t share your email. Don’t make yourself an easy spam target.

Instead, share your safe scr.im URL

Ok, now you’re ready to go Scr.im your email address(es) right? OK.

Visit http://scr.im  and Scr.im your email addresses to trim the spam.