[Web4lib] Mailto: links that can't be harvested by spambots?

[Ross Singer]

Actually, I think that employing /both/ approaches is the most logical.

While, yes, email addresses will still get out, spam filters do
nothing to stop the amount of bandwidth consumed by the spam emails.
By obfuscating email addresses this will at least reduce /some/ of
this burden (which, at the end of the day, /somebody/ is paying for in
bandwidth costs).

I don't think any of the obfuscation proponents are saying that this
will prevent all spam.  It prevents some, however, and, /as I've
already pointed out/, doesn't get in the way of accessibility, so why
not reduce some of the spambots targets?

-Ross.

On 2/19/07, Jonathan Bloy <JBloy at edgewood.edu> wrote:
> Bill Drew wrote:
> > This whole discussion is a bit disturbing to me.  Just put
> > your e-mail adress there.  Bite the bullet and use a good
> > spam filtering package.  Deal with it like the rest of us
> > do by being as accessible as possible.
>
> Excellent advice.  The thing is, we can attempt to protect our email
> addresses to the Nth degree but we will still get spam.
>
> My personal email address (on my own domain) has never been posted
> anywhere.  I use it only for friends and family.  About a year ago, it
> started to get incredible amounts of junk mail.  I can only assume that
> one of my friends caught a virus/trojan on their computer that harvested
> my email from their address book.
>
> Dictionary attacks, where spammers send combinations of usernames to
> specific domains (especially larger ones) are also common.
>
> If you have an email address, spam will find you eventually.
>
> --
> Jonathan Bloy
> Web Services Librarian
> Edgewood College
> Madison, Wisconsin
> http://library.edgewood.edu
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