Hacker News Reader

Why does it require me to put my email address on the end of it for a reward. Considering that for anyone to get any real benefit out of it the links (containing the email address) would have to be posted publicly. Just seems like a huge spam magnet.

I think most people would be pretty wary of adding their email address to a link and posting publicly. Especially on a strange site they dont know about.

View on HN

We had to make a choice: go with a signup form which leads to fewer referrals. Or automatically sign people up when they add their email id at the end of "any" page on your domain to increase adoption rate and get more people to promote you.

This second option could lead to spam worries. Thats why, we offer optional usernames. The first time our system recognizes a new email id, an email is sent out to them with instructions on setting up a username with which they can replace their email id while promoting URLs.

(Also, we'll be launching social media integration buttons next week, which will automatically shorten the URLs and disguise your email ids.)

They offer a username alternative: (And yes, for folks who don't want to show their email address in the URL due to spam worries, they can replace their email address with a unique username.)

Reply on news.ycombinator.com