> -----Original Message----- > From: [email protected] > [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Mike at > Green-Beast.com > Sent: Friday, 9 June 2006 1:39 PM > To: [email protected] > Subject: Re: [WSG] Using PHP to hide email, script made, > testing needed > > The sad part is, even if it can be made fully capable of its > assigned task > and become a popular and accessible solution, new spam-bot > builds would > probably have a work-around built into their new versions > within months. > Unfortunately, if people are allowed to communicate with us > or post to our > sites, we can only hope to slow down or stay just slightly > ahead to the bad > guys.
Without wanting to take this too much off topic, it is a truly interesting problem to be discussed: the different approaches people take to prevent spam bots from harvesting their email addresses. I have used the javascript solution a couple of times on some of our sites, but of course it can cause an accessibility issue. In that case I always provided a form for users that have got javascript disabled. I came across an article at some point that suggested to "spam" the bots with fake email addresses: the authors suggested to create a link for the spam-bots to follow to a page that randomly creates hundreds of fake email addresses (using php or other server-side scripting). Those addresses are collected by the spam bots and in turn bombard its own mail server with bouncing emails. As much as I like that idea it sounds a bit dubious to me and probably will turn around and bite us in some kind of way. I'd be interested to hear what other desperate measures people have taken to circumvent this problem. ****************************************************** The discussion list for http://webstandardsgroup.org/ See http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm for some hints on posting to the list & getting help ******************************************************
