Scr.im combines an e-mail shortening service (exactly like the URL shortening services bit.ly and TinyURL.com) with CAPTCHA to make it convenient to share your e-mail address on sites like Twitter while being more secure from bot harvesting when you would post it anywhere. It’s also a lot better looking and more definitive than the steps people take to hide their e-mail address online:
- Jason at email dot com
- Jason@removethisifyou’renotspam.email.com
Instead, you would publicize your e-mail as http://scr.im/CoDe.
Setup
To secure an e-mail address behind scr.im, you’d first just visit the Scr.im webpage which consists of two simple text boxes. You enter your e-mail address and if you’d like a custom URL, you also fill out the second blank. If you’d just like a few random characters, you can leave the second one blank and scr.im will automatically assign you a short code. When your information is entered, just hit the ‘Protect my email’ button.
This will confirm that your e-mail address was created and give you some quick little tips on how to use it in Twitter, Facebook, or other messages, in HTML, or in forums.
Receiving
On the receiving end, when somebody clicks the scr.im link they’ll reach a page with a more-convenient-than-usual CAPTCHA where the person just has to match the CAPTCHA on the left with the codes on the right-hand side. They call this version of CAPTCHA a “not-so-annoying captcha.” If you click on the failsafe captcha mode, it will take you to a standard CAPTCHA form where you enter the letters or numbers that you see.
Upon successfully answering the CAPTCHA, you’ll land on a page that tells you the e-mail address, which you can click on as a mailto link. There are also two convenient links on this site, one will put the address on your clipboard and the other will open a compose window in GMail.
Scr.im is a great solution to the problem of spam bots harvesting any e-mail addresses found in plain text on the Web. It can also shrink your e-mail address down for Twitter posts. As long as a web form doesn’t validate an e-mail address, you can also use your scrim URL for that site. A few sites are providing alternative registration forms that will accept a Scr.im posting as your e-mail address.
Securely share your e-mail on the web with Scr.im.