[clug] [OT] spam-bot killer

[Kim Holburn]

On 2004 Apr 16, , at 7:42 AM, Sam Couter wrote:

> Kim Holburn <kim.holburn at anu.edu.au> wrote:
>> Simplest of all is to use the html code for "@"  which is &#64;  
>> AFAIR.
>>  There was a study done a year ago or so that showed that spambots
>> never decode even the simplest email obfuscation on web pages.
>
> That only works until it's no longer worth the harvesting program's 
> time
> to ignore the simple obfuscations, ie, until the number of unobfuscated
> email addresses drops below some critical minimum.
>
> If everybody did it, it wouldn't work, so it's not a real solution.

It's like all computer security really.  It works now, so for the 
moment so we use it until we're forced into something more difficult in 
response to whatever's going down at the moment.  You can also use 
javascript encoding and that will work until spammers add a javascript 
interpreter.  But if they did then you could make a page that could 
really chew up spambot cpu cycles.

> -- 
> Sam "Eddie" Couter  |  mailto:sam at couter.dropbear.id.au
> Debian Developer    |  mailto:eddie at debian.org
>                     |  jabber:sam at teknohaus.dyndns.org
> OpenPGP fingerprint:  A46B 9BB5 3148 7BEA 1F05  5BD5 8530 03AE DE89 
> C75C
>
--
Kim Holburn
IT Manager, Canberra Research Laboratory
National Information and Communication Technology Australia
Ph: +61 2 61258620 M: +61 0417820641
Email: kim.holburn at anu.edu.au  - PGP Public Key on request

Life is complex - It has real and imaginary parts.
      Andrea Leistra (rec.arts.sf.written.Robert-jordan)