Actually, there's a real problem with making email addresses un-harvestable (look, I can invent new word!): handicap access (for government people, this is Section 508 compliance). Reader programs for the blind need to be able to read text. If those programs can read text, then spammers can harvest the text. If you block the harvesting, you block the handicap access.
As an example: someone suggested using the image file for the contact email address. This works unless you add an ALT tag. The harvesting software can read the alt tag. Unfortunately, Alt tags are critical for handicap access. So it seems to me that we're going to have to risk the Spam harvesters for the sake of handicap access. Ben BC Web ----- Original Message ----- From: "Evan Pearce" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Sent: Monday, June 02, 2003 5:12 PM Subject: Re: [IMail Forum] Blocking address > On 3/06/2003 at 08:57:32, IMail @ Carrz-Fox-Fire Promotions wrote: > > > <b>[EMAIL PROTECTED]</b> > > > This way it is non-clickable, and it CANNOT be harvested by these idiot's > > I wouldn't count on that. It's still plain text that looks like an > email address; bots don't necessarily look for the mailto: link. > A perl script to search for text (letters, numbers and _+-.), > an at sign and then more text is trivial, and will return cleaner > results than most spammers' lists. > > If you really want to put an email address on a web page, the > least-harvestable ways are to use an image file or to use JavaScript > to put the address together at the browser end. Neither way is > particularly nice for end users, but they'll both stop current bots. > > Cheers, > Evan > > > To Unsubscribe: http://www.ipswitch.com/support/mailing-lists.html > List Archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/imail_forum%40list.ipswitch.com/ > Knowledge Base/FAQ: http://www.ipswitch.com/support/IMail/ > To Unsubscribe: http://www.ipswitch.com/support/mailing-lists.html List Archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/imail_forum%40list.ipswitch.com/ Knowledge Base/FAQ: http://www.ipswitch.com/support/IMail/
