Re: (ET) Spam problems

[Jeremy Gagliardi com]

A common way of doing this on a web page is to use HTML built-in codes to
replace the symbols, like this for my address:

Jeremy@Gagliardi.com

You could encode the entire string, but I encode the "mailto:"; the "@" and 
the
".", like this:

mailto:Jeremy@Gagliardi.com

Some, who are less technically inclined, or perhaps they know better than 
I, do
it this way...

mailto  Jeremy   at   Gagliardi   dot   com

Most people know what's being conveyed.

I wouldn't be surprised if my e-mail address was harvested from the ET 
archive.
As a SysAdmin myself, I know the danger of putting such info up on the 
web, but
also I know how hard it is to prevent it.  However, there are certain
safe-guards one should do to make it as hard as possible.

However, there is also the possibility anyone's e-mail was harvested from 
any of
the last e-mail trojans.  Basically, ANYone who has your address in their 
e-mail
client's address book who caught the trojan, caused your address to be
broadcast throughout the net, completely unintentionally, and SPAMers have 
been
known to harvest from such nefarious means.

--
Jeremy Gagliardi
E20
Bethesda, Md

On Fri, 09 Apr 2004 16:07:01 -0400, "David Roden (Akron OH USA)" wrote:
> It's off topic - related to this list and not the ET - so I hope you all 
> will 
> forgive me for bringing it up this way.  
> 
> Not everyone here may know that there is an archive for this list.  It's 
> located at :
> 
> http://cosmos2.phy.tufts.edu/mhonarc/elec-trak/
> 
> It starts in 1998 and goes right up to the present day.  
> 
> This is a good thing, because it means that if you remember seeing 
> someone's 
> post but not what it said, you have a searchable archive.
> 
> It's also a bad thing, because all of our email addresses are right out 
> in 
> plain sight, for the spammers to harvest.  
> 
> And harvest they do.  I've been getting spam on an address I used just a 
> couple of times to post to this list, so I ran a web search on the 
> address.  
> The above archive was the only bona fide hit.  It's possible that the 
> spammers 
> got it somewhere else, but web searchbots looking for 
> "something somewhere foo" are still a widely used method of adding to 
> the 
> millions of addresses the spammers already have.
> 
> Mhonarc, the utility which compiles the ET archive, has a built in 
> option to 
> obfuscate email addresses.  I'd like to ask whomever has some measure of 
> control over the archive to arrange for that option to be applied.  
> 
> Also, a sed script could easily be run on the existing entries (maybe 
> overnight) to convert all instances of "@" to something like "NOSPAM." 
> 
> Any chance of getting this done?  Otherwise I'll have to start posting 
> from an 
> address that forwards all replies to the bit bucket, which will make 
> things 
> inconvenient for all concerned.
> 
> Thanks for your patience with this post.
> 
> 
> David Roden - Akron, Ohio, USA
> 1991 Solectria Force 144vac
> 1991 Ford Escort Green/EV 128vdc
> 1970 GE Elec-trak E15 36vdc
> 1974 Avco New Idea 36vdc
> = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = =
> On two occasions I have been asked [by members of Parliament!], 
> "Pray, Mr.  Babbage, if you put into the machine wrong figures, will
> the right answers come out?"  I am not able rightly to apprehend the
> kind of confusion of ideas that could provoke such a question.
> 
>                                -- Charles Babbage
> = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = =