Okay Geek Farm
Use Scr.im - Short URL's for your email address (get less spam)
Connor Scalleat
Scr.im is a service which allows you to share your email address on the web via a short URL, which in turn ensures your address will only be read by humans and not bots, aliens, or monkeys. Essentially bots travel the web on a multitude of services such as Facebook, Twitter, Youtube and even your own website. These bots find your email and add it to a growing database which will usually be sold to someone or a business that will want to spam you. If you’re a master of the interwebs such as a T3ch H3lp reader then you can call this an email harvest. Harvest’s usually result in your inbox being full of spam if your email is “harvested” and stored for later.
Luckily, there is a solution to this problem, one that most all users of any website have been complaining about for awhile. Anytime you go to sign up for a service or get denied when logging in too many times, or sometimes even making comments on blog posts, they check to see if you’re not a robot. Yes, you read that right. They check by either asking you to write in the readble text in a picture and place it in a editable field, or by listening to an audio file and typing in the correct letters in that same field.
We all are accustomed to this, but over time it’s quite a hassle, and it can really be annoying when you can’t read those letters correctly. Here’s the good part though — this annoying system is deterring most bots and protecting users of that website by making sure it’s only humans who have access.
Fortunately, there are great people throughout the interwebs not trying to steal your data and are actually helping maintain your safe account. Essentially this is how Scr.im works; you visit their website and enter your email, which will be the ending to an already made short URL (just like Bit.ly) which is accessible to everyone — which may seem odd, but here’s the cool part…
Once you visit a person’s URL, you are prompted to be tested to see if you are an alien, robot, monkey, genetically modified life-form, etc. If you pass the test you are assumed human and can access your friends email. Overall, this is a very handy and painless to use service for use in forums, social networks and even your own website. We definitely recommend you to go check out!
Feel free to drop us a line! — http://scr.im/t3chh3lp
