Obscuring an email from scrapers

I have a PDF as a website, and need people to register by sending me an email. I have a policy about never sending unsolicited emails, and this PDF website makes giving the site intelligence impossible.

I can not use GMail, etc. I need the opting in with my exact domain.

I have all my mail forwarded to gmail from my domain. I never see the spam unless I go to my gmail spam box. On occasion I will log on to my domain email abd will purge their inadequate spam box

 I have a policy about never sending unsolicited emails, and this PDF website makes giving the site intelligence impossible.

I don't fully understand what you are saying. Are you thinking when people send an email to you it has to be the same domain as what they are going to receive email from?

You are still entering email addresses manually and it should be automated and people should have an automated option to opt out. If you use an email marketing provider like MailChimp, you can have a hosted form and the process will be automated where your member will hit the form, add themselves, receive an automated response back asking if that really was them that  signed up for the list (this is called double opt in) and from there each email you send out will have an option to click on a link to opt out.

By using  service like MailChimp, you solve a lot of problems.

I am saying, I have a very strict policy on SPAM and never send an "unsolicited email", ever.

My research tells me that when you register at a website, then get an email in your inbox, by some definitions, this is SPAM, because the first email did not initiate with the user. So, I need to provide the email on my site, where people can register by sending that first email. And this is why I need to obscure the email address, in some way. This ensures a human is using it and not a bot.

For example, my domain is visible in the browser.

So, I could explain the user needs to fill in the blanks by looking at the browser bar, "to ensure you are human".

MyName@M****te.com

at which point they notice the domain is MySite.com and send the email to the proper address.

Normally, when you register at a website, you are entering your data to a form and your data is saved to your email service automatically by scripting. On the form, you may have some verbiage about your privacy policy, terms and either a checkbox or other verbiage that reads something like, "by submitting your email you agree to receive our emails"

That is called opting in.  

What many providers ask for is double opt in.  This is when upon signing up, an automated email is generating saying, "Somebody with signed up to our newsletter with the email account name@domain.com. In order to receive our emails, please confirm by clicking on this link <<link>>"  The link contains a unique string that the server recognizes as the account that just signed up. If it is clicked within a certain amount of time, it is considered double opted in.  

Double opt in is not required. However, where it comes in handy is if you have a high number of unsubscribed that trigger something with your email provider. If you can show you are using double opt in, you have a better chance of not being dropped from the service.

What you are doing is entering in email accounts to the email marketing software one by one. Technically there is nothing wrong with this, but it is the highest risk vs just allowing the email to be sent to your email marketing provider automatically.  When you are entering in the account manually, it will be best to have an automated response as above asking them to confirm.  The reason being you have a chance, though small, that you enter in the wrong email account and instead of entering user1234@gmail.com, you mistakenly enter user123@gmail.com.

The other issue you will find is people forget that they opted in and especially if you don't have an automated way for optiing out, they will just report it as spam.  Reporting may just be from using gmail.com or outlook.com where the user clicks an automatic link reporting to gmail or outlook that it is spam and that is how they prevent it from going to their inbox because it was the easiest path for them.

It does not take many of these to occur before that ISP starts blocking your emails altogether. This is where there is a very large distinction of using an email marketing provider like MailChimp vs sending automated emails from your own server. If you are sending from your own server, it is going to take a very long time to go through the process of proving you tried to do the right thing and to get unblocked. We are talking possible months or more and the process is automated so you are not talking to any one person.

On the other hand, an email marketing provider like MailChimp is going to have a known (to the ISP's) workflow and policy. The provider, because of their size, is also going to have a direct communication flow to ISP's like Gmail and Outlook.com so their IP's are not getting blocked as easily.

Back to your own workflow, your question is about the fact you are getting too much spam to the email you designated to sign up with. What we are saying is it will be very difficult to weed through spam unless you have this built into your email server. Many people use the free email server that comes with their shared hosting service. If that is what you are doing, you are always going to have a spam problem. If you instead switch your email to sign up with to a free gmail account or change your email service to Google Workspace or Microsoft365 or use a third party anti spam service, the spam you get will be very little if anything as it will just go to your spam box.

There is no issue with anti spam guidelines to have people email you at your gmail account to sign up to receive email from yourdomain.com. I will say it does seem odd though. If you want a no cost option, that is it.

If you want to keep your email service as is, and still use the same work flow you are using, then you will want to subscribe to a third party anti spam service.

As I pointed out, the cost of a third party anti spam service can be more than just switching your email provider to using Google Workspace or Microsoft365.  For any of my own clients that I host websites, I have them use one of these two options and never try and manage email as managing spam and other issues is just too time-consuming.

The best option all around is to not manually enter email to your email marketing software and to instead, rely on the forms provided by your service like https://mailchimp.com/help/create-a-hosted-signup-form/

I am saying, I have a very strict policy on SPAM and never send an "unsolicited email", ever.  

To recap,

• It is good you have your own policy
  • This does not prevent people from forgetting how they signed up and at some point use the easy way out by just marketing email as spam to stop it from going to the inbox. 
    • Email can be marked as spam through their own ISP like Gmail.
    • Email can be marked as spam by contacting your own email service provider.
  • If you are sending marketing mail form your own server, having your own policy means little compared to a major provider like Mailchimp. You can  have the best policy and feel as though you are being very strict, however, some of your workflow prevents you from best practices, such as manually entering email accounts without a double opt in.
• The real issue for this question is you are having problems weeding out spam. The possible solutions are
  • Switch your email account for having people subscribe to a gmail account. 
    • Not the most optimal, but within reason and free.
  • Use a third party anti email spam service.
  • Switch your email hosting to a provider like Google Workspace or Microsoft365. 
    • This gives you the same anti spam measures as free gmail, plust some extra and you are using your own domain.
  • Instead of people emailing you directly to add their email to your marketing campaign, use a form provided by your email marketing service.  
    • This will be your best option.
    • Any anti spam is moved away from you.
    • You can offer easy double opt in and other marketing flows