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Protecting your email with 'AT domain DOT com' is making it easier to find

varenhor.st

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Re: Protecting your email with 'AT domain DOT com' is making it easier to find

#3

Post by dan_sim »

A basic search also returns things like "XYZ(AT)gmail(DOT)com", "XYZ[at]gmail[dot]com" and xyz.at.gmail.dot.com . It returns everything, no matter how clever you think you are. And it's not that hard to write a regexp that replace this all into your actual email...

Re: Protecting your email with 'AT domain DOT com' is making it easier to find

#4

Post by eli »

My experience shows that simple bots looking for mailto: links still work just fine. I doubt many spammers are going to go through the trouble of decoding even simple obfuscation.

There used to be a website where a guy actually tried different methods for posting an email address on the web and then measured the number of junk messages at each address. Wish I could remember where I saw it.

Re: Protecting your email with 'AT domain DOT com' is making it easier to find

#5

Post by eli »

eli wrote: post #4

My experience shows that simple bots looking for mailto: links still work just fine. I doubt many spammers are going to go through the trouble of decoding even simple obfuscation. There used to be a website where a guy actually tried different methods for posting an email address on the web and then measured the number of junk messages at each address. Wish I could remember where I saw it.

Here it is: http://techblog.tilllate.com/2008/07/20/ten-methods-to-obfus...

A bit dated now, but using AT and DOT cut the spam to basically negligible levels.

Re: Protecting your email with 'AT domain DOT com' is making it easier to find

#6

Post by est »

cache:

http://74.125.153.132/search?hl=en&q=cache:http://varenh...

tl;dr: you can search 'AT gmail DOT com' on google

I think this technique has been doing by spammers for decades.

The best way to prevent email harvest bots is to use DOM+JS, something like

    electr
    document.write(document.getElementById("my_script").parentNode.firstChild.getAttribute('my_chars')+String.fromCharCode(0x74, 0141, 115-1))
    @gmail.com

Re: Protecting your email with 'AT domain DOT com' is making it easier to find

#8

Post by varenc »

est wrote: post #6

cache: http://74.125.153.132/search?hl=en&q=cache:http://varenh... tl;dr: you can search 'AT gmail DOT com' on google I think this technique has been doing by spammers for decades. The best way to prevent email harvest bots is to use DOM+JS, something like elec tr document.write(document.getElementById("my_script").parentNode.firstChild.getAttribute('my_chars')+String.fromCharCode(0x74, 0141, 115-1)) @gmail.com

The trouble with these and some other solutions (like use of imgs), is that they aren't an option on something like linkedin.com or a forum where users can only post text!

Re: Protecting your email with 'AT domain DOT com' is making it easier to find

#10

Post by est »

varenc wrote: post #8
est wrote: post #6

cache: http://74.125.153.132/search?hl=en&q=cache:http://varenh... tl;dr: you can search 'AT gmail DOT com' on google I think this technique has been doing by spammers for decades. The best way to prevent email harvest bots is to use DOM+JS, something like elec tr document.write(document.getElementById("my_script").parentNode.firstChild.getAttribute('my_chars')+String.fromCharCode(0x74, 0141, 115-1)) @gmail.com

The trouble with these and some other solutions (like use of imgs), is that they aren't an option on something like linkedin.com or a forum where users can only post text!

1. use a special account for special sites

2. use id+mask@gmail.com or anything that can filter

3. something like this myemail_REMOVE_UNDERSCORE_AND_CAPITALIZED_TRAILING@gmail.com

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