E-mail address on webpage

D

David Mackenzie

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) ?
 
P

PeterMcC

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

Mr. Clean

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.
 
F

Freeserve

Mr. Clean said:
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?
 
O

Owen Jacobson

Freeserve said:
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...
 
J

Jukka K. Korpela

Freeserve said:
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.
 
S

Sam Hughes

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?
 
M

Mr. Clean

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]
 
S

Sam Hughes

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="[email protected]"
 
A

Art Sackett

It's been a long time since I had to disagree with Jukka... :D
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. ;-)
 
H

Headless

David Mackenzie said:
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.

Character references are surprisingly effective according to this study:
http://www.cdt.org/speech/spam/030319spamreport.shtml

Note that this email address harvester optionally uses IE, in that mode
it translates character references flawlessly:
http://www.mailutilities.com/aee/


Headless
 
J

Jukka K. Korpela

Sam Hughes said:
A linked image would still have <a
href="mailto:[email protected]"> and </a> around the IMG tag, so
that would do nothing.

Indeed, it would do nothing to help the user who needs the address e.g.
in order to use a special E-mail program (which has nothing to do with
Web browsers).

But it would naturally help spammers' robots get the address. After
all, mailto:... (in content or in attribute value) is a most obvious
candidate for E-mail address harvesting.
 
C

Clive Moss

Jukka K. Korpela said:
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.
The problem is not only about receiving spam, but also the "stealing" of
addresses for the "from" field.
One of my clients got 500 return notifications in one day, obviously from a
mass mail out that someone had done using his address as the sender.
I am looking now for ways to avoid putting addresses on any new sites I
write to avoid this in the future.

cm
 
F

FatBlokeOnBikepins

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.
I'd be interested in receiving that, please.
 
F

FatBlokeOnBikepins

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.

I'd be interested in receiving that, please.

Yoooooors,

Iain.
 
M

Mr. Clean

I'd be interested in receiving that, please.

I already posted it...

[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]
 
B

brucie

In post <[email protected]>
Leslie said...
[spam]
What really pisses me off, though, is the amount of hard core porn
spams I'm getting. These aren't just text emails with a clickable
link to "Pink City," but embedded pictures of oral sex, bestiality and
other activities I don't care to view while enjoying my morning
coffee.

if the email contains remote images as soon as you view the email you
may be confirming that your address is "live" you should turn off the
loading of remote images (and all scripting) or better yet
automatically delete from the server any emails but plain text to save
you having to download them in the first place.
Then there are the emails that 'guarantee to increase my manhood to
please ALL the women in my life.' Who the hell are they sending this
crap to? I don't even have that body part!

i can get you a half dozen factory seconds for only $19.95 + P&H
 
L

Leslie

i can get you a half dozen factory seconds for only $19.95 + P&H

Nah, not interested in seconds, unless they're still sealed in their
original box. This implies, of course, that they've never been used.

Leslie
 
K

Kathleen Coyne

I just read through the thread, and I have a few thoughts.

On the account that I used for years and years, I now end up with
around 100 spam a day. Obviously, I had to stop using that e-mail.
No matter what I did, I could not get the spam to stop. Filtering
just didn't work - it just kept coming and coming. This, of course,
still causes strife because, since I used the address for years and
years, people still e-mail me there. So, I must still occasionally
sift through all that goddamn friggen spam. It really amazes me how
some people can e-mail me on the correct address one day... and the
very next day e-mail me at my old address. Brain fart or something?

My website e-mail gets about 2 spam a month. My "(e-mail address removed)"
address gets spammed all the time.

I also may have come up with a decent and easy way to "hide" an e-mail
address.

I use a javascript trick to remove common markup and make it easier to
change multiple pages -

<script language="javascript" type="text/javascript"
src="filename.js"></script>

and in filename.js I write:

document.write('text HTML blah blah blah')

I have noticed that in doing this, that robots can't crawl the
javascript (to fix the linking problem, I have put a link to a site
map on the main page). Assuming that harvesting robots would work the
same as search engine robots - then the harvesting robots will never
be able to see the e-mail address if you put it in filename.js

So... what you could theoretically do is have this where you want your
e-mail:

<script language="javascript" type="text/javascript"
src="email.js"></script>

and put this in the email.js file:

document.write('<a href="mailto:[email protected]">[email protected]</a>')

and it would work... right? maybe?

Just an idea. Thought I'd throw it out there. I think I may just try
it now. Actually, I currently have my address as me(@)domain.com
'cause I figured anyone with any brain cells would realize to remove
the "( )" - but I think this javascript trick might just be better :)
 
P

PeterMcC

Rob said:
Jukka K. Korpela


If you indeed intend it to be a mailto: link then you have to put
the address in there.


I probably get around 50 between two accounts each day - still
doesn't take long to delete them.

OT ish but thought that it might bring a little joy - I have been the
defence witness for btopenworld in a case in which a company called cube80
were suing because BT had stopped their service after my spam complaints.
It's taken 6 months but yesterday, at Winchester Crown Court, the spammer's
case was thrown out - Yes!

The moral of the story - it is worth making those complaints to abuse@...
and good on BT for taking it seriously.
 

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