Showing posts with label spam. Show all posts
How to Safely Share your Email Address Online
You have just come across a new website at example.com that offers an interesting software utility or an ebook for free. The offer is simple – you give them your email address and they’ll send you the download links over email.
Now while the website policy clearly states that they “won’t sell your email address to third-parties,” you aren't feeling very comfortable sharing your private email address with a website that you've never heard about before. What do you do then?
Do you plan to skip the offer just because you’re worried that spam might hit your email Inbox? Well, stop worrying and get a disposable email address that will auto-expire after some hours (or some days). [via]
Now while the website policy clearly states that they “won’t sell your email address to third-parties,” you aren't feeling very comfortable sharing your private email address with a website that you've never heard about before. What do you do then?
Do you plan to skip the offer just because you’re worried that spam might hit your email Inbox? Well, stop worrying and get a disposable email address that will auto-expire after some hours (or some days). [via]
There are quite a few websites that offer disposable email addresses for free but my favorite is 10minutemail.com. Just visit the and you’ll get a temporary email address that you can use anywhere on the web just like your regular email address (you can even reply and forward message).
The email addresses will self-destruct after, you guessed it right, 10 minutes. They regularly switch their email server domains – you might have been allotted abc@hello.com today but the alias next day could become xyz@bye.com. This prevents forum administrators from blocking members that use temporary addresses.
When Disposable Email Addresses Aren’t Enough..
You may use disposable email addresses when filling out online surveys, registration forms, comment forms, etc. but when you need to share your email address on a public website (like Twitter), disposable addresses won’t help as they expire pretty soon.
You still have a couple of options though.
Scr.im will convert your email address into a short web address (URL). People will have to pass a small CAPTCHA test to see your actual email address (see example).
Another service that can potentially save your email from spammers is reCAPTCHA. The service will require “human” users to solve a CAPTCHA for them to see your full email address in plain text. Here’s a demo:
Another service that can potentially save your email from spammers is reCAPTCHA. The service will require “human” users to solve a CAPTCHA for them to see your full email address in plain text. Here’s a demo:
Spambox.us will let you generate temporary email addresses that can last up to an year. Any email message that’s sent to this temporary address will be auto-forwarded to your main Inbox and, if you think you are getting spammed, you can simply cancel your Spambox address.
Then you have whspr.me that turns email address into a web forms. Anyone can reach you over email by simply writing the message in this form. You can delete the email form manually anytime or set it to auto-expire after ‘n’ days.
And finally the most common method – you can consider creating an image of your email address using labelgen (or even Facebook). Most spam bots won’t notice your email address while humans can easily read the address without having to solve complex CAPTCHAs.
Email Cover can also help you mask your precious email address but, unlike regular email to image converters, it doesn't use straight fonts so your address will possibly stay protected from spammers who are smart enough to perform OCR. See example:
Email Cover can also help you mask your precious email address but, unlike regular email to image converters, it doesn't use straight fonts so your address will possibly stay protected from spammers who are smart enough to perform OCR. See example:
4 Tempting Income Streams To Avoid As A Blogger
Whether you want it or not you will start earning from a popular blog. The world runs on money and anyone will get tempted to earn more and more money if the opportunity presents itself, but there are certain opportunities or income streams which you need to avoid as a blogger. Most bloggers use Google AdSense, Affiliates and direct ad sales as their main source of income online.
But there are certain other income streams which I would like to discuss below, which you need to avoid as a blogger due to the simple fact that THESE INCOME STREAMS CAN DO MORE HARM THAN GOOD.
You will see what I am talking about.
I can resist everything except temptation.
- Oscar Wilde
Lets look at these tempting income streams which you should avoid as a blogger -
Paid Links
I get mails every so often about people asking me if I can insert their links in one of my posts and what not.The answer to this should be a a big NO! But it is not always that easy, these guys offer like 50-100$ and sometimes even more for just 10 seconds work of inserting a paid link on your site, come on, how can you resist that? But you have to.
You may make a quick 500$ in a day by posting a few links to your site, but day by day your traffic and search ratings will reduce drastically as Google picks up on these paid links and penalizes your blog.
That’s not the only thing that can get ruined by paid links, the trust of your visitors may also get hurt if you are linking to a spammy casino site.
So be careful, paid links are not for true bloggers!
Sponsored Reviews
There is nothing wrong with sponsored reviews as long as the reviewer is not influenced by the people being reviewed. I do not mind doing a sponsored review if you want my honest opinion of your start-up, app etc. But definitely would not like to do a doctored sponsored review of something.
This may not have too much effect on search rankings but it will adversely affect your reader relations if you have a good review about a bad product.
Black-Hat Services
Trust me when I say that being a blogger for a long time, you will learn a few loop holes and black hat methods of getting things done easily while blogging.I will not give out examples of these black hat services, as it would only tempt you more 
Never try to sell the loop holes and tricks you have learnt as a blogger to your audience, you are only creating a group of people whose blogs will eventually get penalized, sooner or later.They will hate you for that.
Never use these black hat methods that you have learnt from experience too, you do not want your blog to suffer either.
Pop-Up Ads
Yuck.I hate these ads.
Annoying.
Irritating.
These are a few things I think if a pop up appears when I visit a blog.Have you noticed none of the top and renowned blogs use pop-ups as ads? There is a reason for that.
Pop-Ups can pay a lot of money, but they are the worst for user experience, blogs run on returning visitors, so you need to create as good an experience as possible for your readers.
Pop-Up ads are a total No No.
So these are the four tempting income streams you should probably avoid while blogging, however tempting or whatever money they may offer.If you guys have come across some other income streams which can harm your blog, then please let me know in the comments section!
