[thelist] avoiding spam question

[Daniel J. Cody]

Hi Jeff, and welcome :)

I'd recommend you do #2 for sure, even though its not 1000% fullproof,
or obfusicating them with another method.

Also, I wrote a wee something about this very subject a while back:
Using Apache to stop bad robots
http://evolt.org/article/thelist/18/15126/index.html

hopefully, that gives you some tips :)

.djc.

Jeff Schneider wrote:
> Hello,
> newbie here
>
> I just set up a php/mysql "member directory" for a mailing list I run, where
> users can submit their "profiles"..
>
> One of the fields is e-mail address and that is displayed on each profile.
> Correct me if I'm wrong, but I'm under the impression that spammers the
> majority of their e-mail addresses by using bots to crawl and pick up
> anything in the source code with the @ sign in it.
>
> Now obviously I don't want members who signed up to be spammed.
>
> I was wondering what people think the best way to avoid spam is:
>
> 1.  password-protect the directory (which I'm doing now, but that leads to
> problems like people forgetting the password, etc)
>
> 2.  convert all the code with the e-mail addresses to unicode, so the bots
> won't pick them up
>
> 3.  avoid putting up e-mail address and just have people e-mail me if they
> want to contact someone (so I have to manually forward the messages)
>
> any other suggestions are welcomed.