|
|
Posted by Nikita the Spider on 10/11/06 17:52
In article <xKudndrPlrGuJbHYnZ2dnUVZ8s-dnZ2d@pipex.net>,
"Brian Cryer" <brian.cryer@127.0.0.1.ntlworld.com> wrote:
> "Nikita the Spider" <NikitaTheSpider@gmail.com> wrote in message
> news:NikitaTheSpider-D7E84C.23275410102006@news-rdr-02-ge0-1.southeast.rr.com.
> ..
> > In article
> > <doraymeRidThis-BBFC72.08183911102006@news-vip.optusnet.com.au>,
> > dorayme <doraymeRidThis@optusnet.com.au> wrote:
> >
> >> Anyone here using methods to make it more difficult for spammers
> >> to garner email addresses from web pages. Mostly interested to
> >> hear from anyone using specific methods (rather than anything
> >> else like further reviews, analyses of the ultimate effectiveness
> >> etc, having things like "removeThis" inside the email address
> >> that is in the "mailto:").
> >
> > I've set up several spamtrap addresses to study this. Eventually I'll
> > write a short article about my findings, but in the meantime I'll
> > summarize here. I have three email addresses all on the same page. One
> > is naked (i.e. just foo@example.com), one is entity encoded (i.e.
> > foo etc.) and one is added to the page by Javascript.
> > The number of spams each has gotten to date is as follows:
> >
> > naked - 715
> > entities - 2
> > javascript - 1
>
> Given how easy it is to translate I'm amazed that the encoded version is so
> effective. Just goes to show that spammers are stupid as well as sad.
I was also surprised by this result, but I can think of two reasons why
harvesting bots might ignore any non-naked addresses, even if they're
easy to translate. First, the harvesters might feel that anyone who is
savvy enough to obfuscate his email address isn't likely to respond to
spam anyway. Second, the harvesters might see no shortage of
un-obfuscated addresses, so why go to the trouble of harvesting the
small number of obfuscated ones? It's this latter theory that I prefer
because laziness is a powerful (and common) motivator.
--
Philip
http://NikitaTheSpider.com/
Whole-site HTML validation, link checking and more
Navigation:
[Reply to this message]
|