e-mail to Skyttegaard.com

Most of this post is from an article on the old PostNuke based Skyttegaard.com but the guidelines are still valid.

You may have noticed that Skyttegaard.com does not contain a "mail us" or "contact us" button with direct mail link. The reason is of course that such links are harvested by spammers and we don't actively pursue additional spam mail.

Most mail addressed to any recipient at Skyttegaard.com will reach either Ruth or Peter so we don't really need the contact links. However, we use Gmail for our domain and we apply their bayesian antispam filter to all mails received on the domain so if you want to contact us, we recommend that you read the guidelines below:

Guidelines for mail sent to Skyttegaard.com

Mails sent to typical "standard" addresses such as webmaster, admin, root, info, sales etc. will most likely be deleted by our spam filter unless they are from a trusted source.

If your e-mail contains a Windows executable or script file (exe, com, bat , pif, vbs etc.), it will be deleted. Such files can only be used on Windows systems - and we don't trust Windows to handle executables in e-mails.

If your e-mail only contains text, then please just send it as text or if you really like layout, then html. Don't use a word processor to create an attached file - it just adds unnecessary complexity and we probably don't even use the same word processor.

And talking about word processors: If your mail contains an attachment created in an application using proprietary formats, we will delete it. This includes Microsoft Word documents, Excel spreadsheets, Power Point presentations, Corel Draw drawings etc. etc. Sending such files forces us to buy the proprietary software you are using if we want to read your e-mail.

If for some reason you need to send us a presentation or a spreadsheet, you may use OpenOffice.org files. OpenOffice.org is an Open Source office suite using open standards available for free at all major platforms.

Your e-mail can contain photos but please use a compressed format - preferably png but jpg and gif will also work. These formats can be read with a large number of programs on a variety of platforms and cannot contain viruses. Uncompressed formats such as tiff and tga is a waste of bandwidth unless intended for graphical reproduction. Windows bmp is even worse since it is a waste of bandwidth and can contain viruses.

Other media files (sound and video) will likely be too large for e-mails and you should post such files on an ftp server and send us a link in stead - the smtp protocol used for e-mail is not meant to be used for transfer of large amounts of data. If you still insist on sending media files in mail, then please use Ogg Vorbis for sound and mpeg2 or mpeg4 for video. Proprietary DRM-formats such as wmv and wma will be deleted.

Even if your attachment is in the above recommended formats, we may delete your mail if it is send from Microsoft Outlook or Outlook Express and contains attachments unless you are a trusted sender. Apparently the security holes in Outlook has lead to millions of Outlook installations being virus infected so the majority of attachments in mails sent by Outlook are now viruses. So if you want to send us attached files, we recommed that you use a more mature e-mail client. Mozilla Thunderbird is a good choice.


If you follow these guidelines, it is more likely that your e-mail will reach us.