Quote Originally Posted by ATLien
WTF? Robots & Spiders.. damn, y'all trippin'.
I'm not familiar with spiders per use with search engines but they're popular with spammers who use them searching web pages for the dreaded @ sign. Whenever they find one they immediately copy whatever is to the left and right of it then note it for the spammers - this, is how they get your e-mail address (Techies call it "E-Mail harvesting").

Most websites fight back by either adding REMOVETHIS to their e-mail or numbers (I use the numbers method, i.e. if my e-mail were Taylor@strike3forums.com I would post it as Taylor1234@strike3forums.com then leave a note saying theres no numbers in my name). Humans can pick up on this, spiders can't, and since spammers harvest large numbers of e-mails at once and are lazy they usually miss this as well.

Another way sites fight back, one example here is to leave a bunch of e-mails up that point to mail admins/govt officials. If you go this route on your site be warned, spammers are unscuptulous and will resort to illegal means (Joe Jobs, where your e-mail is put down as the return address to their spam resulting in hundreds or thousands of returned e-mails to your inbox) or Denial or Service attacks.

And now you know