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

[Tony Breeds]

On Fri, Jul 04, 2003 at 12:55:01PM +0800, James Devenish wrote:
 
> 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).

Yup I guess I could do that.
 
> > 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.

Yup you're right.  I missed the '&' so s/\#/\&\#/g.
 
> (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.

I recalled reading a report[1] that said that the above was a good
way(tm) to disguise an email address.  Thats why I suggested it.

[1] http://www.cdt.org/speech/spam/030319spamreport.shtml

Yours Tony

        Linux.Conf.AU       http://conf.linux.org.au/
        Jan 12-17 2004      The Australian Linux Technical Conference!