My apologies to the non-web developers on the list but today I’m going to share a tiny HTML tip that I think can save you a few unwanted emails. (The idea is kind of interesting even if your interest in HTML or web development is only academic.)

People who have their email address listed on web sites get more spam. That is because there are “email harvesting” robots that go out to find email addresses on web sites. Generally those harvesters will scan the backend code of a site for an @. Just as all of us recognize that symbol as a sign of email so does the spam harvester.

One way to slip through the harvester is to not use an @ sign in your email address. You can do this by using &#64 in the HTML code instead of an @ – that sequence of letters will transfer to an @ on the actual site so that real users will not know the difference and robots will not catch your address. It’s not a perfect fix but it will save you a few emails.