UPDATE (June 10, 2014): Visit a revision of this post at Cutting Out the Spam: Disguising Your Email Address (and Phone).
If you don’t want spam, don’t post your eAddress on the internet (or your Twitter name with the @ sign).
Why
Spammers use computer software to search for the @ sign so they can harvest your email address. (Because I’m using it in this post, I’ll get more hits.) They might also be searching for the “mailto:” HTML code for your email link.
What You Can Do
WordPress.com support recommends you use a contact form on your blog or website for people to reach you, but if you’d like to put your email address on a webpage (or that’s your only option), try one of these work-arounds using spaces or spelling out “at.” I recommend option one or two:
- first.last at ministry.org
- bloggername at blog dot com
- first.last @ cru.org
Your friend won’t be able to just click and send you an email, but it’s only a little extra effort for them to translate your code into a working email address. It’ll be worth it to you to limit spam on your website or coming into your inbox.
It wouldn’t hurt to publish your Twitter name without the “at symbol” in front of it. People who tweet will know they need to use it. I imagine this will help avoid some spam on Twitter, but I don’t know for sure.
NOTES:
- Read 18 more great Tips about Email Usage and Abusage which I summarized from Michael Hyatt.
- Email… briefly: tips for keeping your messages short and why you should.
eQuipping for eMinistry 
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