Posted by dorayme on 06/08/05 03:36

> From: Oli Filth <catch@olifilth.co.uk>

> dorayme said the following on 08/06/2005 01:00:
>>> From: Oli Filth <catch@olifilth.co.uk>

>> There are sites to assist you to hide the email address from robots. As Oli
>> has implied, they will ultimately fail when the harvesters get smarter. A
>> sort of arms race. I have used
>> http://automaticlabs.com/products/enkoderform/ with some success judging by
>> lack of spam (but this could be for other reasons, it is no solid evidence).
>> Perhaps Oli's "futile" is a bit strong.
>
> The reason I say "futile" is because you won't know that a bot has
> deciphered your e-mail address until it's too late and you start
> recieving spam. By that point, the game's up and you'll have to change
> address. So it's not an arms race in that respect - it's not like you
> can always keep one step ahead of the bots (not without constantly
> changing addresses). So in that sense (i.e. you e-mail address will
> inevitably end up on a list at some point), you may as well not bother!
>
Well, it *is* an arms race in every respect. You can play it well or you can
play it badly. You keep ahead of the bots presumably by getting hold of the
latest encrypters if they are available (or making them). The game has been
up for many a thing in arms races over the last billion years. That's not a
good reason not to keep playing.

dorayme

(BTW, this is not to say your server side advice was not excellent)

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