Tips for hiding email addresses from spam bots

January 2, 2002 3:27 PM

Zeldman offers some tips and tools on hiding email address from spam bots. Maybe that could be used instead of the %40?
posted by riffola to Feature Requests at 3:27 PM (8 comments total)

How long before the cops get radar detector detector jammer detector jammers?
posted by machaus at 3:51 PM on January 2, 2002

You know... it might even be useful to create an email address in a picture. If memory serves me (and by God it always does) there was a 5k contest entry that created text into a silkscreen font. If one could create a font similar to the one tripod uses for "secure" sign ups then one those fancy image -> text readers wouldn't be able to render it.
posted by geoff. at 4:25 PM on January 2, 2002

I could render emails in flash, y'know. I doubt any spam harvesters ever write a parser for that.
posted by mathowie (staff) at 4:27 PM on January 2, 2002

Here's a link to something similar to what geoff. describes. FYI.
posted by Hackworth at 4:45 PM on January 2, 2002

How about [e-mail]?

Auto generate it and then have your mail filter only accept email that was sent on that day. That's like 2 minutes of work in a script for .qmail. (Assuming you have access to to your .qmail server)

Maybe accept one day prior as well...
posted by perplexed at 5:09 PM on January 2, 2002

Of course, if you just auto-generate it and a spam harvester picks up [e-mail] you can kill that address and get yourself off whatever list you ended up on through that retreival date.
posted by perplexed at 5:12 PM on January 2, 2002

How about using kottke's javascript function. That seems really easy to impement.
posted by ktheory at 8:01 AM on January 3, 2002

Thanks Matt for implementing the new email address format.
posted by riffola at 12:15 PM on January 4, 2002