email signups - not a good idea

[valuehosted]

This is an interesting article why not to use the option to allow for signups via email.

http://emailuniverse.com/ezine-tips/?id=1219&cat=strategy

--Tone

[DW]

The article points out a very big drawback to the email subscribe feature.  It is recommended that you *never* post an email address on the web and this must also be extended to include subscribe links.  Of course, some people prefer to learn the hard way so I will continue to offer the feature.

Forms are not exempt from abuse.  I once received a "nigerian bank" spam through my contact form as a pre-sales question.  It's just a matter of time before spam "terrorists" flood any form they can get their hands on.  Everyone, not just well-known companies, will need to use the "skewed-font image" technique to verify that submissions come from a human.

[valuehosted]

well yes, but the difference between having email links and subscription links is that instead of getting spam, youre now sending out subscription notifications.

A form is much harder to abuse that way.  but yeah a skewed font thing would be a great addition.. is it in the works?

--Tone

[DW]

There must be some existing image generators / processors you can implement easily into your form.

I was just visiting a high-profile marketer's site and noticed he used a delayed javascript to present a Yes / No dialog which then leads the user to send a blank email.

With this method, or any method using JavaScript, you could encrypt the email address so that it could not be discovered in HTML and your address would not be able to be found on the web!  Of course, if your email address is john@site.com then you can expect a few false subscriptions from spammers that "guess".

[valuehosted]

yeah thats called a dictionary attack; my admin set up a disctionary attack protection script.  Quite handy really.

Would love to see a skewed image included though as an option.

http://perlmonks.thepen.com/124732.html - for some skewed image info... and some guy with way too much time on his hands.

--Tone

[DW]

I did a search for "php image verification" on Google and came up with phpNoise.  It looks promising:

http://www.phpnoise.com/tutorials/1/1

I will definitely consider this for ListMail.  I agree that it would be a very cool, original, professional feature.

[bbc]

Looks like this idea fell by the wayside?

Any tips on how to implement/add-on one easily?

Thanks!
B