What is this site, anyway?

In (very) short

Sh.am presents your email address to people in a way that people can read, but automated programs cannnot.

We like to say "Sh.am it, don't spam it". Or "Sh.am against spam". But that's a bit cheesy.

A bit more explanation

Sh.am (pronounced: "sham") is a small but important part of the battle against spam. It's a very simple idea, so this page will be quite short.

You may have written, or may one day consider writing your email address somewhere on the interwebs (blog, tweet, forum etc. etc.) like this:

Unfortunately for us, a lot of computer programs (called "robots") have been written to scour the web and find email addresses, farming them into big databases. These databases get sold to spammers. Ergo, if you do the above, you will later receive lots of emails about consolidating your debt.

The traditional solution (that fails)

Some of you try and foil the evil robots plans by writing things like this, instead:

Unfortunately the robots are cleverer than we thought and can easily suss that tactic out. Your email address will still end up being farmed.

We at Sh.am propose a very sleight adjustment to this practise that will severely hamper the efforts of the aforementioned "robots".

What can we do?

Instead of typing in your email address, put in a Sh.am link to your email address (you can generate one here):

When Jon visits the link, he will see your email address in a way he can read, but robots cannot:

Here is the link to the Sh.am our friend in our example would use: http://sh.am/Mp9tyy

Does it stop humans from being able to read it too?

No, because then poor Jon above wouldn't know where to send his photos. It isn't humans we're worried about, it's automated computer programs.

So next time you're considering putting your email address somewhere terribly public, don't - use Sh.am instead.