[thelist] Email address hiding question

[Christian Heilmann]

> > I am sure that spammer _do_ know how to simulate a real browser. I
> > would be very surprised if anything related to user agent is a good
> > counter measure. Heck, even offline browsers have a "simulate IE"
> > option :-)
> 
> Of course they could spoof their user-agent, but my question is, what is the
> general practice among spammers? Do they spoof their user-agent, or do they
> send the user agent "Spambot/1.2"? (and if they do spoof a popular browser,
> how does that affect market share statistics?)

If you think as a spammer, the answer should be obvious, one of the
things you want is not to be found out, the other to circumvent any
protection the web developer might have come up with.

I would like to think that the number of spammers is not that high to
affect stats too much, but then again, how would one define a browser
market share? Every web site uses different metrics tools, some of
them clever, others horribly basic.It is a bit of a vicious circle:
Ignorant/Arrogant/Cheap company blocks out other browsers than IE,
browser vendors and third party plugin developers allow the browser to
spoof MSIE, company thinks MSIE is still the best and there is no need
to care for the others.

-- 
Chris Heilmann 
Blog: http://www.wait-till-i.com
Writing: http://icant.co.uk/  
Binaries: http://www.onlinetools.org/