[SpamCop-List] Re: mailto: suggestions

[Marjolein Katsma]

Jim Seymour (jseymour at spamcop.net) wrote in news:bvp396$m1j$1
@news.spamcop.net:

> Hiding an email address by encoding it with HTML and/or Javascript 
> tricks is, at best, a short-term cure - and at worst, will give you a 
> false sense of security while providing none.

IMO, JavaScript is a bad solution because it excludes a lot of people; 
roughly 10% of web users don't use JavaScript.
 
> If the spammers' robots don't know how to decode hidden mailto links
> by now, they will soon.

I doubt there's much of an incentive - they're collecting enough email 
addresses as it is. What they do collect is still more important than 
what they don't, and there's plenty to harvest out there. Most spambots 
are actually quite stupid - some can't even properly follow links and 
generate malformed requests for the web server; with that kind of 
programming decoding obfuscated addresses is a long way off.

> My preferred solution is to use a custom CGI script with an hard-coded
> destination email address.  The user has to fill in the message in a
> web form, rather than using his own mail client - but in my opinion
> that's a small price to pay for the protection it provides.

It will also keep some people away; personally I *hate* "email" forms, 
and will avoid them whenever possible. The most annoying bit is that 
using such a form, I don't get to keep a copty in my email client as I 
would when using real email.

So no, I don't think it's a small price - it makes it harder for people 
to contact you, and some never will. I don't want to make it hard for 
people - I only make it hard for bots.


-- 
Marjolein Katsma - Amsterdam, NL - http://hshelp.com/
Spam reporting addresses: http://banspam.javawoman.com/report3.html

Spammers steal resources: they're my enemy.
Cyveillance steals resources: they're my enemy.
The enemy of my enemy can be my enemy, too.