E-mail address on webpage

Every so often, someone posts a method for obscuring their e-mail
address on a webpage - normally to attempt to defeat spambots.

These methods either rely on Javascript which is unreliable at best,
or "encrypts" the characters to their HTML entities which shouldn't
defeat even the simplest spambot.

Do spammers actually consider webpages a worthwhile source of e-mail
addresses? I have only ever had one spam e-mail to the address on my
page, whereas the address I use for Usenet gets around 25-30 per day.

I only have the one website, so I would like to ask others here who
have more: Do you get many spam e-mails to the addresses on your
webpages (assuming they only appear on your webpage) ?

--
David. (Please modify address to david@ before replying!)

David Mackenzie wrote:
> Every so often, someone posts a method for obscuring their e-mail
> address on a webpage - normally to attempt to defeat spambots.
<snip>
> I only have the one website, so I would like to ask others here who
> have more: Do you get many spam e-mails to the addresses on your
> webpages (assuming they only appear on your webpage) ?

Around a one third/two thirds split - web page/newsgroup address.

--
PeterMcC
If you feel that any of the above is incorrect,
inappropriate or offensive in any way,
please ignore it and accept my apologies.

In article <essdfv0bh09d7q09krt3hai9p91rhe8fi7@4ax.com>,
dcm@tarbrax.freeserve.co.uk says...
>
> Every so often, someone posts a method for obscuring their e-mail
> address on a webpage - normally to attempt to defeat spambots.
>
> These methods either rely on Javascript which is unreliable at best,
> or "encrypts" the characters to their HTML entities which shouldn't
> defeat even the simplest spambot.
>
> Do spammers actually consider webpages a worthwhile source of e-mail
> addresses? I have only ever had one spam e-mail to the address on my
> page, whereas the address I use for Usenet gets around 25-30 per day.
>
> I only have the one website, so I would like to ask others here who
> have more: Do you get many spam e-mails to the addresses on your
> webpages (assuming they only appear on your webpage) ?
>
>

The obfuscators no longer are a safe way to keep harvesters at bay.
The only way is to use scripting. If your host has PHP capabilities, I can send
you a PHP script that will show you how. You can also be modify it to work with
ASP, if you'd like.

"Mr. Clean" <mrclean@protctorandgamble.com> wrote in message
news:MPG.1960d64a65df3b599899d0@news-server.austin.rr.com...
> In article <essdfv0bh09d7q09krt3hai9p91rhe8fi7@4ax.com>,
> dcm@tarbrax.freeserve.co.uk says...
> >
> > Every so often, someone posts a method for obscuring their e-mail
> > address on a webpage - normally to attempt to defeat spambots.
> >
> > These methods either rely on Javascript which is unreliable at best,
> > or "encrypts" the characters to their HTML entities which shouldn't
> > defeat even the simplest spambot.
> >
> > Do spammers actually consider webpages a worthwhile source of e-mail
> > addresses? I have only ever had one spam e-mail to the address on my
> > page, whereas the address I use for Usenet gets around 25-30 per day.
> >
> > I only have the one website, so I would like to ask others here who
> > have more: Do you get many spam e-mails to the addresses on your
> > webpages (assuming they only appear on your webpage) ?
> >
> >
>
> The obfuscators no longer are a safe way to keep harvesters at bay.
> The only way is to use scripting. If your host has PHP capabilities, I can
send
> you a PHP script that will show you how. You can also be modify it to work
with
> ASP, if you'd like.

What about if your mail to link is a picture??? Does this fool the spam
bots?

"Freeserve" <thaynes@herfarm.freeserve.co.uk> wrote:

> What about if your mail to link is a picture??? Does this fool the
> spam bots?

Well, it surely discriminates against blind people. This would be
criminal in some civilized countries (like the UK) for public Web sites
at least.

I recently read an estimate (in a newspaper article that _favored_
munging E-mail addresses) that an average user gets 6 or 7 spam
messages daily. So it takes a few seconds a day to delete the spam. All
those attempts to "fight against spam" by intentionally forging
addresses surely cause more trouble than that.

--
Yucca, http://www.cs.tut.fi/~jkorpela/
Pages about Web authoring: http://www.cs.tut.fi/~jkorpela/www.html

Freeserve wrote:

> What about if your mail to link is a picture??? Does this fool the
^^^^
> spam bots?

If you can figure out how to encode "<a href='mailto:your@address'>" as
a picture *and* have it work...

Mr. Clean <mrclean@protctorandgamble.com> wrote in
news:MPG.1960d64a65df3b599899d0@news-server.austin.rr.com:

> The obfuscators no longer are a safe way to keep harvesters at bay.
> The only way is to use scripting. If your host has PHP capabilities, I
> can send you a PHP script that will show you how. You can also be
> modify it to work with ASP, if you'd like.

When the scripting is done and all, it sends regular, ordinary,
HTML+Javascrpt+CSS etc to the browser. How would using PHP, using ASP, or
using any server-side scripting solve your problems?

Or are you talking about a form-to-email script?

In article <Xns93A3CEDC9CE34jkorpelacstutfi@193.229.0.31>, jkorpela@cs.tut.fi
says...
> "Freeserve" <thaynes@herfarm.freeserve.co.uk> wrote:
>
> > What about if your mail to link is a picture??? Does this fool the
> > spam bots?
>
> Well, it surely discriminates against blind people. This would be
> criminal in some civilized countries (like the UK) for public Web sites
> at least.
>
> I recently read an estimate (in a newspaper article that _favored_
> munging E-mail addresses) that an average user gets 6 or 7 spam
> messages daily. So it takes a few seconds a day to delete the spam. All
> those attempts to "fight against spam" by intentionally forging
> addresses surely cause more trouble than that.
>
>
Nah, not too much trouble if you have scripting available
on your host:


[PHP CODE]
<?
// email.php
// usage:
//
// <A HREF="email.php?to=me&domain=mydomain.com">E-Mail Me</a>-->
//
//

if(!isset($_GET["to"]))
{
// $_GET["to"] = "info";
$to = "info";
}

if(!isset($_GET["domain"]))
{
// uncomment this to have it retrieve the domain
// from the URL.
//$_GET["domain"] = "mydomain.com";
$domain = "mydomain.com";
}

$email_address = $to."@".$domain;

// send email header to page
header ("Location: mailto:$email_address");
?>
[/PHP CODE]

"Jukka K. Korpela" <jkorpela@cs.tut.fi> wrote in
news:Xns93A3CEDC9CE34jkorpelacstutfi@193.229.0.31:

> "Freeserve" <thaynes@herfarm.freeserve.co.uk> wrote:
>
>> What about if your mail to link is a picture??? Does this fool the
>> spam bots?

A linked image would still have <a href="mailto:email@asdfsdfdf.com"> and
</a> around the IMG tag, so that would do nothing.


> Well, it surely discriminates against blind people. This would be
> criminal in some civilized countries (like the UK) for public Web sites
> at least.
>
> I recently read an estimate (in a newspaper article that _favored_
> munging E-mail addresses) that an average user gets 6 or 7 spam
> messages daily. So it takes a few seconds a day to delete the spam. All
> those attempts to "fight against spam" by intentionally forging
> addresses surely cause more trouble than that.

Speaking of that...

The most amusing way of spamproofing that I have seen is here:
http://www.hpcalc.org/contact.php

However, that is not of much use, as can be seen here:
http://www.google.com/search?q=%22eric%40hpcalc.org%22

Jukka K. Korpela <jkorpela@cs.tut.fi> wrote:

It's been a long time since I had to disagree with Jukka...

> I recently read an estimate (in a newspaper article that _favored_
> munging E-mail addresses) that an average user gets 6 or 7 spam
> messages daily.

Hmmmm... this would indicate, to me, that the "average" user is behind
a very effective spam filter. Without my filtering, I would be subject
to (what I estimate would be) 100-200 spam messages each day. I know
that I block between 70 and 120 SMTP connections each day, and that
many of those would be delivering to multiple recipients (each of which
ends up in my mail reader).

> So it takes a few seconds a day to delete the spam. All
> those attempts to "fight against spam" by intentionally forging
> addresses surely cause more trouble than that.

It's my opinion that none is obligated to accept another's traffic
unless/until there's some contractual obligation willfully emplaced by
the subject parties. If my terms of contact are that the sender first
pass some Turing test, it's up to the sender to either accept my terms
or forego the contact.

That said, I don't and never have munged my email address. I've never
published an undeliverable address, although some that I advertise
deliver to my local spamcatcher. ;-)

--
Art Sackett,
Patron Saint of Drunken Fornication