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Send me a message

Or: the reason why I had to replace all "mailto:" links with JavaScript snippets in my web pages.

If you aren't interested in the "reasons why" and you just want to send me a message, go straight to the bottom of this page.

Internet: a dream that became true... too much true

"Once upon a time" it was common opinion that the Internet should had become one of the greatest way to freedom of expression and democracy for everyone... fantastic.

Actually, that vision was right. But the problem is that freedom and democracy, like much other things, may be used for everyone's well-being, or may be abused by few arrogants.

Spam

So, what happened? It happened that in few years, this extremely powerful tool for well-being was transformed into a powerful marketing tool. Yes, few things could be as desirable as the opportunity to send advertisement to an enormous number of recipients in a short time and, above all, with very low costs. To do this, the only thing needed is a database of e-mail addressess, and just by using any PC one can send e-mail advertisements to all users whose address is included in the database. The so called "spamming" (a slang word that identifies sending of massive unsolicited e-mail) phenomenon increased rapidly. Many e-mail boxes are daily flooded by messages that contain enchanting promises that invite us to buy products, services, to visit web sites where we can "easily" use our credit card...

But... how do spammers to get valid e-mail addresses to be stored in their databases? Several software systems have been developed, and more and more powerful computers have been set up to do this; all in all, the technique is simple: just program a software (so called "web-bot", like those used by all search engines to update their databases) to scan all known internet sites (jumping from one to others just by following hyperlinks) and to look for all words that are (or could be) e-mail addresses (for example, "mailto:" tags or words with the "@" and some dots in the middle).

So, all people who in some way "published" their e-mail address in any page in Internet (for example, by sending a message to a public newsgroup, or by publishing his/her personal web page), sooner or later will be included in some spammer database or, more likely, in databases set up by companies that in turn sell e-mail addresses to spammers.

So my e-mail address, that until now was visible on these pages, has been captured by hungry web-bots, just for spammers joy. During last year, the amount of unsolicited messages has become ten times higher than "true" messages. Unbearable. And it was getting worse.

Defending against spam

Now, I can't even hope to free myself from spam, unless I change my e-mail address. But my address is widely used by all people who I am in contact with, and changing it will surely be a trouble. But, at least, I can avoid that my address is included in more and more spammer databases; at least, the problem shouldn't get worse.

For this reason, my address is no longer explicitely written on these pages, but it has been replaced by a small JavaScript code.

How to send me a message

Click on my e-mail address below; if JavaScript is enabled in your browser, a window will appear to compose and send me the message. If JavaScript is not enabled, just use your e-mail software and manually type my address:

that here is shown by a graphic image, impossible to be "understood" by ultra fast (and ultra stupid) web-bots. It is spelled like "a.giove AT mclink.it".