[thelist] Hiding email address from spambots

[Shawn K. Quinn]

On 2004 August 05, Thursday 08:47, Casey Crookston wrote:
> Before someone says it, yes yes, I know that the best way to do it is
> with an html form and a server side script.
>
> 1) use CSS:
> http://www.phoenity.com/newtedge/hide_email_spambots/

This isn't terrible, but can't be too hard to defeat, either.

> 2) Use Javascript:
> http://blazonry.com/javascript/js_hiding.php

This is a bad idea as disabling Javascript for untrusted sites is now 
being recommended more often. Some non-Javascript alternative should be 
provided at minimum.

> 3) Use Unicoding:
> http://www.website101.com/spam_file/spambot_unicode.html

More appropriately called "use numeric entities". This can't be too far 
from being completely cracked.

My current plan is to serve a unique address for each date/time and IP 
address of access, and disallow the indexing of the page with 
robots.txt. True, this doesn't stop the spam outright, but the 
harvesting robots can then be reported to the ISP they came from and 
those addresses disabled. Not sure who to credit for the idea, as it 
wasn't mine originally, I saw it done before.

-- 
Shawn K. Quinn