Why do I use [at] for my email address instead of @ on websites?

Have you ever wondered how so many spammers get your email address? One place they look is on websites. There are millions of web-robots crawling the internet looking for email addresses. If you have an email address listed on your web page, these web robots will find it and add it to their list given enough time.

And if you put the address in a clickable "mailto:" link, they're sure to find it.

Now I know pefectly well that spammers will get my email from others places, but listing my address with the [at] has definitely helped. In the grand scheme of things, I don't suppose it matters all that much, it's just a geeky kind of thing to do.

Of course you don't have to do this for printed material, just web pages!