Philonoist.net

I’ve owned joecollege at gmail since the early days of the service. You know, back when we only had 10 invites a piece, people were crazy enough to buy and sell them, and we all wondered what the hell we were going to do with a gig of storage space each. In 2007, I switched to using my full name, with middle initial, as my primary Gmail account, but since some people can’t be bothered to update their contact information, I’ve kept joecollege, automatically forwarding e-mail to my primary account. Most of it is bacn: the grey e-mail that’s not quite spam because I signed up for it, but is mostly unwanted and I’m not bothered if I don’t get around to reading it.*

Every so often, however, I’ll get a form e-mail response: I’ve gotten multiple ones from MySpace.com thanking me for signing up for their service. This morning I got one from CCBC, the Community College of Baltimore County (had to look it up). I usually scratch my head: there’s no f’ing way I’d sign up for MySpace, and CCBC would probably be a step down for me academically, not to mention a hell of a commute. Doing some digging usually yields that someone signed up for a form or online service, using joecollege at gmail.

Um, hello? Why the hell would you do this? Taking the time to sign up for something like Myspace, just so I go and delete it, is absolutely ridiculous. It’s a waste of my time and yours as well. You don’t get anything out of it: even on Myspace, I get your password e-mailed to me and go and delete your account. I have the key to the box that contains the key to your box, and I can change your key without your knowledge.

Here’s an example: the CCBC form responses were mailed to me.

Form: askanadvisor

1. First Name: Joe
2. Last Name: College
3. Your E-Mail Address: (e-mail removed by me)
4. Verify Email address: (e-mail removed by me)
5. Phone Number:
6. Status at CCBC: Prospective Student
7. Credit or Continuing Education Student: Credit
8. Major or Program of Study:
9. Purpose for Attending CCBC: Associates Degree
10. Type of Question: Selecting a major
11. CCBC Campus attending: Catonsville
12. Question that you would like to have answered by an academic advisor. (Be as specific as possible): <blank>

Here are the fathomable possibilities:

1) Some jerk developer is testing his own website code skills. Solution: don’t be an idiot, use your own e-mail address. How can you test the form submissions if you use a “fake” address?

2) Somebody felt like submitting a form for shits and giggles. Clearly this person gets excited clicking submit buttons. Here’s my solution: form-submission computations. If you really feel like submitting a form, just for the hell of it, go to such and such website, fill out the form, and once you submit, we’ll borrow your computer for 15 seconds and do some number-crunching for cancer or something for the greater good.

Actually, why aren’t we doing this already everywhere? It’s like reCAPTCHA but on a form-submission level. If you’re going to legitimately sign up for something, 10 seconds won’t hurt. It makes it prohibitively expensive for multiple spam submissions, and it’s for the benefit of humanity. Time delay is less of a usability flaw than a litmus test on a confusing looking graphic. If you’re upfront with the form and say it will take 10-15 seconds, so much the better, since real people will wait. The actual data from the form is inserted into the database at the end of the time period, of course, forcing spambots to wait the whole time.

Hmm… Thoughts?

*My personal bacn filter is to move anything with the word unsubscribe in it (among others). It’s not perfect, but since I check the bacn folder often (at a subject line level) I don’t miss much.