SPAM and archives (Was: Re: [plug] PHP question..)

[Onno Benschop]

On Fri, 2003-07-04 at 12:55, James Devenish wrote:
> In message <20030704042027.GB18801 at spark.plug.linux.org.au>
> on Fri, Jul 04, 2003 at 12:20:28PM +0800, Tony Breeds wrote:
> > At the moment it's basic as all it does is s/@/_at_/  WHen I move the
> 
> If the address is to be displayed in a human-readable form, could you do
> something more obscure, like 'goober from cantech'? (surely
> harvesters will soon realise what _at_ stands for).
> 
> > goober at cantech.net.au =>
> > #103;#111;#111;#98;#101;#114;#64;#99;#97;#110;#116;#101;#99;#104;#46;#110;#101;#116;#46;#97;#117;
> > 
> > Which I understand email harvesters don't like.
> 
> (1) I would have thought such as idea would have been based on HTML
> character codes or URL encoding. The above example seems to be a blend
> on the two and is technically neither. Most humans would get no value
> from the above.

In the browser the ASCII characters are displayed as human readable.

If they browse the net and copy and paste the above, it will be parsed
and shown correctly on most mail clients - at least, that's what is
supposed to happen - and on my Debian box with Galeon and Evolution it
does.

> (2) If you actually meant to use one of the above-mentioned encoding,
> surely that will be utterly ineffective when spammers start using a
> stock standard HTML parsers to build their harvesters -- the encoding
> won't make a difference.

This may well be true, however I'm sure that Tony is basing this
encoding scheme on the research that was recently completed about this
phenomenon. You can read it here:

        <http://www.cdt.org/speech/spam/030319spamreport.shtml>

Onno Benschop 

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