Does "at example dot com" work?

It seems to me that as more and more people obfuscate their e-mail addresses in the form of "johndoe at example dot com", this isn't going to be a very effective method any more. For example, this Google search for "at gmail dot com" (with the quotes) yields over a million results, most of which can be readily parsed straight from the search results page. So for people who use this sort of obfuscation, does this prevent you from getting on spam lists?

Comments
Post a comment »

Sorf of. I use it on my website, but sign up for so much free crap that at some point someone just decided to use addresses anything@carlyerger.com, and I get undeliverable mail statements.

I don't understand what you're asking. Do you mean, for example, the way I get all mail addressed to [anyprefixlikethenameofawebsite]@___.___.com? Yeah, that has finally failed as a workable method. Strangely, it's because spammers have started sending mail to [randomstringofletters]@___.___.com.

Therefore, shutting down compromised/sold former ___.___.com addresses I used to use no longer shuts down all the spam.

Is that what you were asking?

Nah, that wasn't what I was asking about. I was referring more to the way people "spell out" their e-mail addresses when posting them in public places, like using "johndoe at example dot com" instead of "johndoe@example.com".

On the Soapbox