Unfortunately, there are wind-driven individuals out there who love to do nothing else than messing up the WEB system and peoples mailboxes.

They make programs that randomly scan WEB pages all over the WEB for E-Mail addresses, which in turn are placed in mass-mailing lists, without the owner's consent or knowledge. Sadly to say, this is one of the most common activities on the WEB today!

They use these mass-mailing lists for sending out "offers" for various types of 'crap'. considered as 'SPAM'. May be you already have got some offers for 'Viagra'...

These mailing-lists are also placed on CD's, which in turn are for sale, to just anyone. Consequently, other wind-driven individuals may use these lists for corrupting the whole system, like sending out viruses to mailboxes, and when these mails are opened, the virus programme starts, and begin copy itself and send out itself, by using the address-book on that particular computer.

This will go on, until something breaks down in the whole system, which, if worse, could cut out the whole WEB traffic throughout a whole country, or Continent...

So why not try to pay back a little? By placing a few letters like 'xxx' before the actual E-Mail address, their search engines will still consider the E-Mail address as valid. However, when trying to use the address, their spam or virus programmes will fail.

The best of all, you will stop receiving SPAM and VIRUSES - at least from programmes picking up E-Mail addresses.

If you have a WEB site or page, why not do the same.