Are we allowed to do this?

[Ironic_Bondage_Name]

Are we allowed to post email addresses that are specifically designed with the intentions of kinky chatting to like minded strangers?If we are, feel free to add me on MSN (ironically UNDERSCORE HERE bound 'A' WITH A PLEASANT CIRCLE AROUND IT hotmail DOT com).I'm a switch male who is looking for a domme in Hong Kong, or at least someone to talk playful with!Ironic_Bondage_Name2011-11-08 09:44:34

[LockedInALocker]

[quote="Ironic_Bondage_Name"]Are we allowed to post email addresses that are specifically designed with the intentions of kinky chatting to like minded strangers?[/quote]     I don't know if it's allowed; but, if it is, and you decide to do this, could I recommend a mild form of "munging"?: that is, disguising the form of the address so that it is easily decodable by humans, but will (hopefully) foil spam-bots.     So, using your example, instead of giving it direct (which I won't do here, in case you decide to edit your post to follow my suggestion), represent it like this instead:  ironically [underline character - no space on either side of it] bound remove-this-spam-blocking-phrase at hotmail dot com     Note the presence of several obfuscating devices, in case spam-bots do get smart enough to get past any one of these.  With a bit of thought, it would be possible to include yet further obfuscating devices, yet remaining readable to a human reader.     On the few occasions I deem it necessary to publicly display an e-mail address of my own, I encode it in a similar way.  Even so, it may be best to do this only with an e-mail address you are prepared to make even semi-public, and you are prepared to risk attracting spam to.  But I believe this suggestion will at least significantly reduce the amount of spam attracted to it.Regards, Michael.LockedInALocker2011-11-07 06:41:50

[stephanie_cd]

You're allowed to post e-mail addresses, but there's a few reasons it's probably not a particularly good idea: This forum, along with other forums, is routinely scanned by "search bots", many of which are just harvesting e-mail addresses to forward to spammers. Go read http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E-mail_address_harvesting for more information on the topic. Realize that of the 93 active users at this particular moment, 3 are registered users [and I'm one of those] and there are 90 "guests" who didn't even bother to sign up for this site. 35 are search bots -- one is a Google bot and the rest are "unknown." Those really aren't good percentages -- over a third are potentially putting your e-mail address on a "spam list," and two thirds are just casual perverts living their fantasies vicariously through us slightly more dedicated kinky people, and the casual perverts aren't even serious enough to sign up with their own free-mail address. If any of them DO bother to send you an e-mail, what percentage do you think will be wasting your time if they're not even serious enough to sign up for a free bondage bulletin board? This is a discussion forum -- it's not a kinky dating, hook-up or networking service like alt.com, bondage.com, bdsm.com, fetlife.com, collarme.com, or any of the many others. While a few members HAVE gotten together over the seven(?) or so years of the forum, the number of meetings and/or relationships that have developed is probably statistically insignificant, and probably somewhere well under 1% of active users. If you're really looking for a Domme or someone to "talk" kinky with, you might consider one or more of those sites as well!If you still want to publish your e-mail address out there for the entire internet to read, you might want to go back and edit your post to make the address less obvious to the spybots: a human being can recognize "ironically_bound (at) hotmail (dot) com" as an address and reformat it if they want to send you an e-mail, but a spybot isn't going to automatically register it as an address to add to its collection.

[LockedInALocker]

[quote="stephanie_cd"]... two thirds are just casual perverts living their fantasies vicariously through us slightly more dedicated kinky people, and the casual perverts aren't even serious enough to sign up with their own free-mail address.[/quote]     I might add that, quite often, I am one of those who are casually reading the site without signing in - so some of those anonymous people may in fact be known members of the forum.  Especially if I am short of time, or don't expect to post in that session, I sometimes don't bother to sign in.  I would imagine many others would be the same.     Stephanie, do you think some spam-bots just *might* be able to decode addresses formatted in the kinds of ways both you and I suggested?  I like to think this is safe for the time being; but I must admit that I first started doing that some years ago, and spam-bots may well have advanced beyond that now.Regards, Michael.P.S.:     Stephanie, would you mind telling me how you indent your paragraphs in that manner?  I know how to indent the first line (just hit the space-bar 5 times - with most forums the way to do this is rather more elaborate), but I don't know how to indent every line the way you have done.     Occasionally I have wanted to do that, if I wanted to set off items in a list, and each item is a few lines long; but the only way I know is actually hit "Enter" at the end of each line, which fixes it in length and thus may not look right, and then put the required number of spaces in front of every line.  (I normally allow 80 characters per line in this situation.)  But if I could avoid doing this, it would allow the lines to wrap properly, yet still indent properly.     And can it be done *without* the little bullets at the start?

[cagedsgt]

Use the bullet option

[Petrajane]

[quote="cagedsgt"]Use the bullet option[/quote]?? Now, to my warped little mind, this means shoot the little buggars Spambots that respond....

[stephanie_cd]

[quote="LockedInALocker"]I might add that, quite often, I am one of those who are casually reading the site without signing in - so some of those anonymous people may in fact be known members of the forum.  Especially if I am short of time, or don't expect to post in that session, I sometimes don't bother to sign in.  I would imagine many others would be the same.[/quote]Actually, I'll admit that I do that too -- but the number of "looky loos" still probably outnumbers actual members at least five-to-one at any given time. [quote="LockedInALocker"]Stephanie, do you think some spam-bots just *might* be able to decode addresses formatted in the kinds of ways both you and I suggested?  I like to think this is safe for the time being; but I must admit that I first started doing that some years ago, and spam-bots may well have advanced beyond that now.[/quote]They might be able to; I don't lay awake worrying about it. Even if spambots can't figure it out, anybody who feels malicious or playful can decipher them and do who knows what with them, so I'm just routinely careful where I put my e-mail addresses in public places -- just basic spam prevention techniques! [quote="LockedInALocker"]Stephanie, would you mind telling me how you indent your paragraphs in that manner?  I know how to indent the first line (just hit the space-bar 5 times - with most forums the way to do this is rather more elaborate), but I don't know how to indent every line the way you have done.[/quote]As cagedsgt said, use the "bullet option" -- which is called "unordered list" on our toolbar here: [quote="LockedInALocker"]And can it be done *without* the little bullets at the start?[/quote]That, I don't know -- try playing around with the button labeled "indent" and see what you can come up with? 

[boundBinder]

[quote="Petrajane"][quote="cagedsgt"]Use the bullet option[/quote]?? Now, to my warped little mind, this means shoot the little buggars Spambots that respond....[/quote]I once saved several pieces of spam and responded to each with a list of the others' addresses.  DUELING SPAM!!

[Ashleigh]

[quote="Petrajane"]
[quote="cagedsgt"]

Use the bullet option[/quote]?? Now, to my warped little mind, this means shoot the little buggars Spambots that respond....[/quote]

Petra,

Something like this:

ILikeBondage *@* gmail *.* com

Remove the stars and spaces, and you have an email address (it isn't mine, so don't email it. Or do, because it'd be an awesome email address. ) - that way, bots won't figure out your email address.

OR...create an image in paint, where you type your address in, then save it as a JPEG. Upload this image to some site like photobucket, and then post it here. Again, bots really don't read images, they just scour text.

[stephanie_cd]

[quote="Ashleigh"]OR...create an image in paint, where you type your address in, then save it as a JPEG. Upload this image to some site like photobucket, and then post it here.[/quote]That's seriously clever -- I like it!  ...except why bother with "upload this image to some site like..." when we can just upload an image to the forum?