[plug] spam

[Leon Blackwell]

On Fri, Nov 16, 2001 at 03:06:09PM +0800, Steve Grasso wrote:
> A oldie, but how about email addresses entered on a web page by ASCII entity 
> number? a la
> 
> steveg@calm.wa.gov.au

Metafilter uses something similar, in that it escapes the @ symbol in
the mailto: and makes it a %40.

The problem, again, with these techniques is that they are quite easily
parsed if the spammer is looking for them.  A simple rule of turning all
&#\d{1,4}; looking things into their actual characters would get around
your technique, and standard URL encoding rules fixes Metafilter's.

Although, if that sort of thing appeals to you, a novel approach is used
on this forum (http://discuss.fogcreek.com/joelonsoftware/).  The users'
email addresses are output by Javascript, such that the actualy address
isn't readily available.  This could still be grabbed my a spambot, but
only if it runs a subset of Javascript.

The best way I've found to make addresses hidden is to put it in an
image.  But then users can't click it or copy'n'paste it, so you end up
losing functionality.

The unfortunate truth is: there will always be spam...  :\


-- 
 Leon Blackwell                | Spoon-feeding, in the long run,
 http://www.lostrealm.com/     | teaches us nothing but the shape of
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