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Posted by Nikita the Spider on 10/12/06 22:26
In article <1160683148.686585.304140@c28g2000cwb.googlegroups.com>,
"John Dunlop" <usenet+2004@john.dunlop.name> wrote:
> Nikita the Spider:
>
> > Myself, I'm pretty impressed by the fact that the entity-encoded address
> > received only two spams while its unprotected counterpart has received
> > over 700. If this method is inferior, I'd like to know to what!
>
> mentioned now more than once in this thread: normal counter-spam
> measures. That means junk mail filters both at the server and at the
> MUA.
Hmmm, I guess we'll have to disagree on the criteria we use to measure
"inferior". Even the best mail filters can generate false positives,
which is something that an entity-encoded address won't do. And it'd
have to be a pretty darn effective filter (or set of filters) to achieve
what the entity encoding has done in this test. Furthermore, entity
encoding is something that any Web page author can do; the same can't be
said for setting up and tuning server-side filters. Last but not least,
entity encoding *prevents spam from being generated*. Mail filtering
doesn't do this. And if I just rely on my ISP's filters to handle my
spam for me, isn't that "passing the buck"?
> [re e-mail address obfuscation running contrary to the spirit of
> Internet specs]
>
> > I see your point, but the spec isn't strongly worded.
>
> Well, every clause in the spec is vague enough to be open to, however
> absurd, interpretation.
If you say so.
> I specifically talked not about the spec's wording but about its
> spirit. To learn about the spirit of HTML you have to trace its
> history: follow the past discussions, study the earlier drafts and
> specifications, find out why the constructs were introduced in the
> first place.
>
> > As you pointed out, the relevant section is here:
> >
> > http://www.w3.org/TR/html401/charset.html#h-5.3
>
> I quoted from there but did not mean that as the 'relevant section' to
> learn why character references came about. You will find that not in
> the HTML4.0 spec but in ISO8879 (my copy's at work and I haven't yet
> memorised it all, so much to my consternation I can't give you chapter
> and verse.)
I haven't read ISO8879. I'll grant that my opinion might change after
doing so. But of all of the abuses to which HTML has been and is
subjected (sending XHTML as text/html comes to mind), I find it hard to
believe that entity encoding email addresses would be in the top one
hundred of many people's lists, if at all.
--
Philip
http://NikitaTheSpider.com/
Whole-site HTML validation, link checking and more
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