Is anything automatic ever done with the email field in our profiles?

March 11, 2005 2:51 PM

Matt is anything automatic ever done with the email field in our profiles? [the more she is inside]
posted by Mitheral to MetaFilter-Related at 2:51 PM (9 comments total)

Reason I'm asking is I realised today that some people just check the email field when looking for a member's email and not their description field. I've got a machine readable email address in my email field which I've selected to not be displayed. However if a MeFi machine will never read that field I'll put my obfuscated email in the email field and remove it from the description.
posted by Mitheral at 2:51 PM on March 11, 2005

Umm ... alternatively, you could put "See below" in the email field (it doesn't insist on any particular formatting), and then someone who looks in your email field could ... um ... look further down on your profile page, yes?

[Also, if you have a question that you want to ask directly of Matt, he does have an email address in his profile.]
posted by WestCoaster at 4:03 PM on March 11, 2005

The email field is automatically obfuscated on the profile page in the "user at domain dot com" fashion if you put in a non-obfuscated email address in. It's also only shown to logged-in members, so any spam harvesters would have to pony up $5 just to get a relatively small list of email addresses.
posted by zsazsa at 4:35 PM on March 11, 2005

WestCoaster if I put see below in the email field I might as well just stick my obfuscated email there. I'd have emailed Matt directly but previous experience has shown it appears I'm not smart enough to make it pass his HumanOrBot white listing program.

user at domain dot com immediately following Email: isn't exactly what I'd call obfuscated. The only to logged in members is better. Hadn't realised that in the past probably because my style sheet doesn't do colours (classic black text on grey for me always) so the identifier is invisible.
posted by Mitheral at 5:37 PM on March 11, 2005

I've noticed some folks write out their email in strange ways in the extended area. Just say it there and keep your email private and hidden.
posted by mathowie (staff) at 6:09 PM on March 11, 2005

this kind of thread makes my head explode.
posted by FieldingGoodney at 6:14 PM on March 11, 2005

is "user at domain dot com" really a good way to keep email addresses private? it seems like it'd be pretty easy to hack a harvester to read those.
posted by delmoi at 11:15 AM on March 12, 2005

Has this ever really been a problem? You can't see the e-mails unless you're logged in, and I haven't heard of any large spamming attempt (besides today's measley one.) Why is this important?
posted by graventy at 12:55 PM on March 12, 2005

Tip of the iceberg graventy. We've obviously reached scumbag noticable critical mass.
posted by Mitheral at 7:07 PM on March 13, 2005