Marjolein Katsma - 2004-12-25 18:14:01 -
In reply to message 1 from Olivier PlatheyThe technique of encoding email addresses still works pretty well for me against spammers - but I use a random combination of "entity encoding", URI encoding and unencoded letters to make it hard for a spambot to apply just one decoding technique. I've been combining a unique address per page with this technique.
A few of these addresses have been found by viruses (as opposed to spammers!) because when a user saves a page, IE actually rewrites it, and thus saves the page with the email address decoded - ready for HD-scouring viruses to find.
Much rarer is the spammer who's used an address that was obviously manually lifted from a page. Just a single one that was possibly harvested by a spambot.
Summary: It isn't 100% protection - but it's still good protection against spammers; much less against viruses if your address (encoded or not) is on a page that's interesting enough for people to make a local copy of. It's the load of virus mail (not infection) that bothers me more now than spam - I'll probably switch to contact forms.
Olivier Plathey - 2004-12-21 20:53:07
