Email N. Christopher Phillips

To protect myself from spammers' address harvesting robots, I have had to disguise my email address on my web pages. This page provides two ways to email me. The first requires javascript. If you run your web browser with javascript turned off (a strongly recommended security measure), use the second method, which requires you to manually make changes in the email address generated by the browser. Also, before emailing me, please read below about not sending html (web page coded) messages, Microsoft Word files, etc.

email (javascript):

email (no javascript): In the address in the following link, please delete "_9117" and also make the obvious omission: ncp_9117@darkwing.uoregon.OMITthis.edu

When emailing me:

Please use plain text (7 bit ASCII), with no encoding

Normally, I read plain text (7 bit ASCII) only. See the first table here, but exclude the characters in positions 0--31 and 127. (These are essentially the characters found on a standard English language keyboard. Note that this excludes "educated" (curved) quotation marks, curved apostrophes, all accented letters (use "ue" or the TeX code "\"{u}" for u Umlaut), and some characters that Microsoft claims are plain text.)

Don't use Yahoo mail. It appears to be incapable of sending plain text which is not encoded.

Writing mathematics in plain text email (for those who don't know TeX).

No binary files or attachments

Except by prior arrangement. Even then, never put any text after any attachment. If you do, I will never see it. Reason: I see attachments in their encoded form, which usually looks like a long string of gibberish. When I come to an attachment (or html) while reading a message, I stop reading right there. I do not scroll through hundreds or thousands of lines looking for more text.

No lines over 78 characters (preferably no lines over 72 characters)

Reasons here.

No mime encoding or other encoding of ordinary text messages

No Microsoft Word files

I do not accept these under any circumstances, since I don't have software that reads them. See:

If you really want to send something in a word processor format, use some version of TeX, such as LaTeX. Free versions exist on most platforms.

No html encoded (web page format, or "styled") messages

Send plain text without html on University of Oregon systems. See "Configuring Mail Clients to Send Plain ASCII Text" for how to turn off html in a number of email programs. (Another copy is here.) Gmail isn't addressed; instructions for it are here (JavaScript unfortunately required). To summarize part of one of the websites listed below:

html email can be dangerous.
html email is not always readable.
html email wastes bandwidth.
html email is simply not necessary.

For more on what is wrong with html and how to turn it off, see:

Dan's mail format site on html
Problem Solving: Sending Messages in Plain Text
Harley Hahn's turn off html.
The ASCII Ribbon Campaign
HTML e-mail is STILL evil!!!
Instructions on turning off HTML attachments in some email programs (plain text; pdf is here).
Email tracking (heading "Email tracking" on this page), an explanation of how email senders use web beacons to determine whether their messages are read, when and where their messages are read, whether the recipient has had other contact with the sender (reading cookies), etc. As explained, the only way to be sure of blocking such things is to use an email reader which don't interpret html or load images. That is, if your email program doesn't understand html, email tracking doesn't work.
Email marketing and tracking (heading "Email marketing and tracking" on this page), a shorter explanation of how email senders use html email to determine whether their messages are read, and collect other information about the recipient's computer, location, etc. But if your email program doesn't understand html, none of this can happen.

Here are some collections of spam I have received: page 1, page 2, page 3, page 4, page 5, and page 6. Please don't do business with these people or support their political causes. Here I single out some particularly persistent spammers: