Definitely. Obfuscation is most effective if you employ it early on.

Thanks for the comment. The findings are based on Silvan Mühlemann’s 1.5 year empirical study of email obfuscation techniques. The reverse text direction technique proved to be the most effective blocking 100% of spam while the least effective method resulted in 1,800 spam messages.

I agree with you regarding Google Apps. Google Apps is a great way of “filtering” spam. We use it ourselves and recommend it to customers. This said, not everyone is on Google Apps and no spam filter is 100% perfect. There’s always the chance of false positives. Some companies get hundreds of spam messages per email address per day — a real problem if it’s your company’s primary sales or support email.

Ideally, you use both — a proven obfuscation technique to limit the total number of spam lists your contact addresses are added to, and a filter like Google Apps to filter out the few spam messages that get through.

I ask because I’ve had my personal email address—completely unobfuscated—in the footer on every page on my personal websites through the years for about 10 years, and I have never been overwhelmed by spam.

Currently I am at around 10 spam mails per day, and they’re all caught by Google Apps, and it has been quite constant for years.