Jakob Nielsen, Email Spam, and useit.com Images
Jakob Nielsen is doing something weird. On useit.com he is using a combination of text and images to display email addresses. Visit the site and scroll to the bottom. Highlight the text, if you need to, and you’ll see what I am talking about. Is he trying to avoid email harvesting? Is he trying to be clever? Why not just make each email address an image? Is this a lame attempt to save bandwidth? Bizarre.
April 18th, 2005 at 3:50 pm
I’m going to guess it’s to block harvesting, and that there are two reasons he isn’t going all-out with making each address an image:
1. It’s easier to maintain. If he has to put up a new email address, he doesn’t have to create a new image, just alter the text a bit.
2. Accessibility. If someone has images disabled or can’t see them, they can at least guess at .com.
April 19th, 2005 at 1:27 pm
Ugh! That is a strange way to do it - I can think of more sensible implementations but thats pretty typical of Jakob, no?
Indeed, I can understand his concern - having been spammed to the address I use for his newsletter and having gotten no comprehension of what this meant from his list service - ‘them: ok, we’ll unsubscribe you’ ‘me: umm, no…’ - I can understand that he is having problems with his contact details
(psst, john - registration disabled!)
April 20th, 2005 at 2:29 am
I have about 10 million actions to take regarding WebWord. I’m moving away from PostNuke but I am not sure when. I am swamped with work and I’m on the road all the time these days too. Eeek! Registration will probably go away…