Don’t hide your email address – good advice or not?

re: Don’t hide your email address – good advice or not?

jader3rd — Thu, 06 Jan 2011 21:56:51 GMT

The problem with saying "Won't mailto: fix the problem" is that most people don't have an email client configured for their personal computers. I'm the only person I know who has an email client on their personal computer. Whenever I have to do IT support for family/friends, and they're walking through getting their email, they always sign in through a web browser.

Find a webpage with a mailto:, take a non technical relative, and have them click on the link on their computer. The look of confusion they get as the browser freezes, and a wizard pops up to configure Outlook/Live Mail, teaches them to be afriad of mailto: links and that they should never click on one again.

I think that mailto: would be a great solution, if you could configure Windows to use a url as your default mail client.

re: Don’t hide your email address – good advice or not?

L. — Sun, 02 Jan 2011 18:34:05 GMT

> Humans have to decode your obfuscated email address and will probably get it right,

> but isn’t it so much easier to click on a mailto: link rather than having to type it out manually?

The answer to this is, of course, to have a script in the webpage that automatically de-obfuscate the addresses.

Of course, a harvesting bot could execute the script, but it would need to execute javascript, and a Turing-complete bot could be used to play some interesting tricks (harnessing spammers' computing power to useful tasks!). More seriously, this won't happen: like graylisting, bypassing this would run contrary to their cost model.

re: Don’t hide your email address – good advice or not?

Martijn Grooten — Thu, 30 Dec 2010 11:00:13 GMT

I don't go as far as him: I usually write local-part (at) domain or something (though my work address is on our website*) but don't do any further obfuscation than that. I don't think it's worth the effort and the stress (I know people who take care not to publish their 'official' email address anywhere and then get totally upset when it 'leaks'). Also, I wonder if in the long run it makes a significant difference. Once your address is on a spammer's list, it is on it. It doesn't matter that they could easily add it another 73 times.

* because I am working in anti-spam, I have an interest in spam, especially in those spam messages that make it through filters. I think I'd give the wrong message if I said "I want to get spam" but let's say I prefer spammers to send their spam to me (or to you, for that matter) than to my mum.