[turtle777]

Why do people still obfuscate their email address like this

johndoe at domain dot TLD

or

johndoe(at)domain.TLD

For sure, a spam bot harvesting email addresses can put these back together into a working email address. So, do those people still think spam bots are THAT dumb ?

-t

[Stradlater]

smart people used to do this when laymen posted their full address (i.e. when spam spiders were just taking off)

now, smart people will post images, use javascript or &#____; for obfuscation, or (if lazy), a more proprietary version of what you listed above, requiring smart deletion by user. laymen, meanwhile, react to the rise of spam by doing as you mentioned, and losing.

[Mithras]

I treat it like a CAPTCHA: Require the person to do things that a computer can't.

A computer can definitely run javascript and decode HTML encoding. A computer can even OCR an image, though it might be awhile before the spam harvesters decide it's worth their while to do that.

A computer has a much harder time figuring out, say, "Hi, I'm Mithras. Write me at {myfirstname}@domain.com.", which is what I use to obfuscate these days.

I also use the slightly less difficult: Email me at my gmail account, with the username mithras.the.prophet.

[itai195]

I never post my e-mail address. Problem solved.

[Stradlater]

Originally Posted by Mithras

I treat it like a CAPTCHA: Require the person to do things that a computer can't.

Yup, this approach works best. I, like itai, however, just don't post my email address.

And if I must submit my email for a service that I can't just use Mailinator for, I usually use Gmail, append "+hostname" to my alias, and then if I start getting spam addressed to "[email protected]", I know the culprit and set up a filter.

[Mithras]

I'm surprised spammers don't strip out plus-addresses.

[itai195]

That's why it generally shouldn't be done with your main gmail account

[turtle777]

Originally Posted by Mithras

A computer has a much harder time figuring out, say, "Hi, I'm Mithras. Write me at {myfirstname}@domain.com.".

You gotta be kidding me.

-t

[PurpleGiant]

I post my address anywhere and everywhere. Personal address in forums in necessary, and on my personal website, work address on the work site. I haven't noticed any more spam than one account that is posted nowhere online.

The filters catch 99% of it anyway. It's just not something I bother with.

[Person Man]

Originally Posted by what_the_heck

You gotta be kidding me.

-t

I once saw a webpage that said, "to e-mail me, take the first letter of my first name and the first 7 letters of my last name and put the at symbol after them and then take the capitalized letters from the phrase 'America OnLine' and add a period and then add the last three letters from the word 'dotcom.'"

[turtle777]

Originally Posted by Person Man

I once saw a webpage that said, "to e-mail me, take the first letter of my first name and the first 7 letters of my last name and put the at symbol after them and then take the capitalized letters from the phrase 'America OnLine' and add a period and then add the last three letters from the word 'dotcom.'"

-t

[SpaceMonkey]

I usually just tell people to send me a snail mail to ask for my email address, and then I snail mail it back. I haven't had a problem with spam yet!

(kidding)

[turtle777]

Originally Posted by SpaceMonkey

I usually just tell people to send me a snail mail to ask for my email address, and then I snail mail it back. I haven't had a problem with spam yet!
(kidding)

You never got junk mail ?

What's your secret ?

Oh, let me guess:
You just tell people to send you an email to ask for your snail mail address, and then you email it back.

-t

[turtle777]

Originally Posted by Mithras

I'm surprised spammers don't strip out plus-addresses.

Yeah, me, too. Anything alias that has to follow a certain convention in order to be processed by the email server should be easy to "decrypt" by a bot.

If not, you are not worth spamming.

-t

[mitchell_pgh]

I do it like this

m i t c h e l l (at) m r r o b o t . c o m

let em try and figure that one out...

[GSixZero]

I wonder if spammers think about the fact that people who do any of the most rudimentary steps to hide their email address are also probably smart enough to know A) how to filter most spam and B)that phishing, nigerian royalty scams, and penis enlargement pills are all to be avoided?

If anyone has any questions about this comment, feel free to email me. Please decipher my email address using the following mono-alphabetic substitution algorithm.

[email protected]

Code:
 A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z <- Original
T X L Q I W Z N P K G B F H R Y A V J E S C D O U M <- Coded

[rickey939]

[email protected]

[turtle777]

Originally Posted by mitchell_pgh

I do it like this

m i t c h e l l (at) m r r o b o t . c o m

That's not bad. Maybe this would be even better:

M / Y - N < A + M # E (at) D & O ! M ( A ) I $ N . TLD

--> w/o any special characters but @ and .

-t

[GSixZero]

/\/\ î t ç h é | | (at) � � r ö b ø † . � Ω m

Edit: unicode is a bitch.

[turtle777]

Originally Posted by GSixZero

/\/\ î t ç h é | | (at) ? ? r ö b ø † . � Ω m

Edit: unicode is a bitch.

-t

[turtle777]

Originally Posted by rickey939

[email protected]

I hope the hampstor has a good spam filter.

Something along the lines of mv * /dev/null

-t

[Mithras]

Originally Posted by GSixZero

If anyone has any questions about this comment, feel free to email me. Please decipher my email address using the following mono-alphabetic substitution algorithm.

[email protected]

Code:
 A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z <- Original
T X L Q I W Z N P K G B F H R Y A V J E S C D O U M <- Coded

Sheesh, you could have at least provided it sorted by coded letter instead of original! Anyway, your web site seems to be down -- is there a problem?

[seanc]

[email protected] = black hole

Originally Posted by mitchell_pgh

I do it like this

m i t c h e l l (at) m r r o b o t . c o m

let em try and figure that one out...

Uhm... that's not really that hard. In pseudo-code:

removeSpaces(text);
if ((hasSubString(text,".com"))
replaceText(text,"(at)","@");

[mitchell_pgh]

Originally Posted by hayesk

Uhm... that's not really that hard. In pseudo-code:

removeSpaces(text);
if ((hasSubString(text,".com"))
replaceText(text,"(at)","@");

Hey guys, my address is m i t c h e l l (at) m r r o b o t . c o m Please feel free to write.

Trying to remove the spaces will cause problems... because you will probably pick up the "is" or "Please"

[turtle777]

Originally Posted by mitchell_pgh

Hey guys, my address is m i t c h e l l (at) m r r o b o t . c o m Please feel free to write.

Trying to remove the spaces will cause problems... because you will probably pick up the "is" or "Please"

I agree to the "is", but the Please ?
Come on, there is no TLD "COMPLEASE"

-t

Originally Posted by mitchell_pgh

Hey guys, my address is m i t c h e l l (at) m r r o b o t . c o m Please feel free to write.

Trying to remove the spaces will cause problems... because you will probably pick up the "is" or "Please"

It wouldn't take much text parsing know-how can get around that. "Is" and "Please" don't have spaces between each letter - it's not hard to find the starting point. Just start looking for single letters separated by spaces. Now if you put

My address i s m i t c h e l l (at) m r r o b o t . c o m

It would make it a bit more difficult, but if I was a spammer, I'd also look for addresses beginning with is and take off the is. So I'd send it to ismitchell and mitchell.

You could make it more difficult by saying
My address i s mi tc he l l (at) mr ro b ot . co m P l ea se feel free to write.

But even then, a spam robot could start looking for at, (at), <at> and parse outward in both directions from there. The right side is easy - stop at .com, .net, etc. But even for the left side, you can stop looking when you hit email, is, at, etc.

[Buckaroo]

So they don't get junk email from spam spiders.