> From: Chris Barker <ftog AT threeshoes DOT net>
>
> I have just looked at lists.tako.de and the email addresses are
> obfuscated.
>
> What am I missing?
These don't look obfuscated to me:
http://lists.tako.de/mbox/Olympus-OM/2009-01
I got there by Googling for "Olympus mailing list". It was the first
hit. Then I clicked on list archives, then I clicked on the first mbox
link. Surely, spammers can find it as well.
There are 65 matches to your email address in just the first month of
2009, about two-thirds of which are in message headers -- which you
put there by posting -- rather than message bodies -- which we put
there by quoting. (I didn't do an exact count.) And there are more
than 100 archive files, each of which conceivably has similar stats.
Then, just for fun, I put your email address directly into Google. The
number 1 hit, with the email address in plain text for all to see and
harvest, was http://www.threeshoes.net. (I note that you put spaces
around the "@" and ".", but if Google can figure it out, don't you
think the spammers can?)
I think you need to do some housekeeping before complaining about how
others sweep the floor. I suggest a form-based contact page, with
absolutely no mention of your email, obfuscated or not. That is the
tried-n-true way of keeping spambots from getting your email address
from your website. A one-line regular expression can harvest "Jon @
YoYoDyne . com" and turn it into "Joe@xxxxxxxxxxxx" (Take that one,
spammers! :-)
The only sure way to keep your address out of the hands of spammers is
to never post to an archived email list. So either we start a campaign
to eliminate the archives (which I would personally oppose), or we
stop being obsessive about incidental exposure of email addresses in
message bodies.
It may also be possible for Thomas to make the archives accessible
only via password. That's how GNU Mailman works. Spending our energy
campaigning for that seems like a much better return on
bitchvestment! :-)
But even then, if you're in the address book of a compromised Windows
machine that is being used to propagate spam, they've got your address
-- even if you never used it for anything but one email to contact the
person with the compromised machine.
It's infuriating! I agree! But it's better on your blood pressure if
you accept things you cannot change, no matter how infuriating.
:::: When you change the way you look at things, the things you look
at change. -- Wayne Dyer ::::
:::: Jan Steinman <http://www.EcoReality.org> ::::
--
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