Spam Policy and
Contact Information

but I'm about ready to abandon that one because of the massive amount of spam that it receives. I also recommend that you put "Hillcrest" somewhere in the Subject line of your message. If you put "húgÈ målë mèmßÊr" or "UNIVERSITY DIPLOMAS" or "Order Viãgrä On-Line" in the Subject line, I'll just delete your message along with all the other spam that goes to that address.

I don't like to post e-mail addresses on web pages, but if you really, really want someone to be able to click on your name in your class e-mail list and send e-mail directly to you, I can make it happen. Just send me an e-mail and tell me that you want a mailto (that's what it's called in HTML), but be warned: Spammers get a lot of their e-mail addresses from programs affectionately called spambots or spiderbots that crawl the web looking for e-mail addresses on web pages. I hide my mailto addresses on these web pages with JavaScript encoding. So far none of my JavaScript encoded addresses have been found by the spammers, but I'm afraid their spiderbots will eventually become sophisticated enough to read JavaScript. I'll do my very best to protect your address like I protect mine, but nothing is perfect on the web.

I hate spam with a vengeance. Early in my Internet career I used my incadrv e-mail address indiscriminately at numerous web sites. As a result of my naivete, that address must have found its way onto one of those "One Million E-Mail Addresses" CDs that the spammers use.

For a while I was getting a ton of messages daily for multi-level marketing schemes, porn sites, bankruptcy advice, mortgages, viagra, and "One Million E-Mail Addresses" CDs (how ironic!). I even started reporting all of the spam through SpamCop. That didn't seem to help, so I finally just gave up, stopped checking my incadrv mail account, and got a new address, but along the way I learned a few tricks for avoiding spam mailing lists.

#1 Never use your primary e-mail address when you sign up for something on the Internet. Get a free address at a site such as Juno, Hotmail, Yahoo, or Sneakemail.com. If a web site requires an address, use your free one. (You might want to keep a list of where you have used it.) If it starts getting too much junk mail, abandon it and get another free address.

#2 Never sign up a friend for something on the Internet. Resist the temptation to click on "E-Mail This to a Friend."

#3 Never reply to unsolicited e-mail even if it has an Unsubscribe link. That justs confirms to the spammer that your address is good.

#4 Never forward a message that has already been forwarded a bunch of times and has a gazillion e-mail addresses in the various headers. The least you can do is copy and paste the pertinent part into a new message. This won't remove all of the dinosaur tracks (the >>>> marks inserted by the other e-mail programs), but at least you can easily delete the addresses of all of the previous recipients.

Just my two cents worth.

Cindy