[thelist] Hiveware email address encoder

[Tom Dell'Aringa]

--- rudy <rudy937 at rogers.com> wrote:
> however, i'll give it another shot (hopefully my last)

> > How do you suggest I as an individual "not condone email
> > harvesting"?
> 
> by making sure that your email cannot be picked up by spambots

Hrm. So it's MY responsibility as an individual to help defeat the
bots? (us vs. the borg as it were eh?)

Boy, Rudy I find that comment nothing short of amazing! So it is MY
fault I get spam! However, I think its already been proven (jeff said
so nicely) that:

A. The Enkoder (and many other tricks such as joe at joe dot com) are
surely not 100% effective. We can't know how effective they are. We
can't even know if they are effective AT ALL. We can know, however,
that for people that have disabilities, or no JS on, or in some other
instances that they cannot easily get our contact information! For a
business, that is unacceptable. I don't care if you have 1,000 email
addresses on your corporate site, its unacceptable.

B. What about people who are unaware of these methods? These are
HARDLY widely used methods. In fact, other than web developers on
their personal sites, blogs and lists - I don't know anyone else who
uses them

> > Okay, I don't condone it.  Wait, my mailbox is still filling up.
> yeah, like "all we need is love" -- oops, another war

I don't get the connection - although I agree John Lennon was a putz.

> the thing about spam is that it <em>does</em> cost you

Don't think anyone disagrees on that (well, I don't).

> and as long as we're discussing things rationally, may i suggest
> that the
> cost of dealing with spam is threefold -- the cost to set up a
> filter, the
> cost to manage the filter on an ongoing basis (e.g. looking through
> the spam
> folder for false positives), and the cost of wasted network cycles

The cost of NOT doing it is worse. 

> compare this to the lost sales revenue of a couple of
> dumber-than-bricks
> (note: this epithet is not specifically aimed at anybody's parents)
> potential customers who cannot figure out "joe at acme dot com"

Your missing the point that it's not just "dumber than bricks"
people. Jeff already discussed this and I agree with him.

> dismissing a scheme which does not provide 100% access to
> absolutely
> everybody, which unfortunately include spambots, just because a
> couple of
> people wouldn't "get it" is a sad argument for accepting the
> onslaught of spam, because that'll sure as heck cost you

But you've misstated the argument. 

1. It might be 0%, not 100, or 80 or 50%.
2. Lots more people probably don't get it than you state.
3. I don't "accept" the onslaught, I deal with it.
4. Few people are using these methods at all, only techies for the
most part.

Again, if you are a business owner, you don't take the chance on
someone not being able to reach you. There are ways of dealing with
spam, so you deal with it.

In short, the problem of spam is not people who don't "hide email
addresses" effectively. The problem is the people behind the spam.

cheers!

Tom


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