Email Bots - A new way of getting email addresses to spam them?

[Jamison]

I just thought of this. People these days are posting email addresses on forums and websites in the format: name[at]address[dot]com
This is supposed to be a work around so email bots can't grab your address to spam it. However, what makes you think programmers that make email bots won't get smart and also search forums and websites for that kind of format to get email addresses instead of the traditional name@address.com?

My point here is that almost whatever we do, we'll always get spam... However, this may prevent it a lot more than using the real address. Just a thought guys!

[Matzon]

I've given up on posting my email address - so I just post it as normal, and then rely on greylisting and spam assassin - works pretty well

[woogley]

use an image instead of text.

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[Breakfast]

Use literal english ("my username at the well known email service provided by google" for example) rather than any standard encoding. Until they get their Natural Language Processing up to scratch (possibly not even a computable problem) that will hold them off.

[Jamison]

Haha. Some good but probally confusing solutions.

[ENC]

Maybe we should insert binary codes in the email...

or better.. byte codes.. heez

[Mr_Light]

image recognising bots seem better at spotting the numbers and text in those security checks then I do on occasion I have to simply press next cause I can't make out what they are writing.


as far as foo[at]barr[dot]comand bla@nospamgoogle.com I wouldn't worry about making it more sophisticated, its like any piece of 'commercial' software as lng as it works why touch it; as long as  enough 'plain' email adresses are found I wouldn't worry to much about it.

[Jamison]

Maybe we could just encrypt our email addresses and the other person can decrypt it.

Run this and you'll see what I mean.

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public String decrypt(String str) {       String newStr = "";       for (int i=0; i<str.length()/3; i++) {          int off = i*3;          String s = str.charAt(off)+""+str.charAt(off+1)+""+str.charAt(off+2);          char ch = (char)Integer.parseInt(s);          newStr += ch;       }       return newStr;    }    System.out.println(decrypt("110097109101064097100100114101115115046099111109"));

I used the following method for encryption:

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public String encrypt(String str) {       String newStr = "";       for (int i=0; i<str.length(); i++) {          String c = ""+(int)str.charAt(i);          if (c.length() == 1) c = "00"+c;          if (c.length() == 2) c = "0"+c;          newStr += c;       }       return newStr;    }

Okay, yes, bad encryption. Easy to break, but maybe we'd get lucky by the email bots. Haha.

[blahblahblahh]

I just thought of this. People these days are posting email addresses on forums and websites in the format: name[at]address[dot]com
This is supposed to be a work around so email bots can't grab your address to spam it. However, what makes you think programmers that make email bots won't get smart and also search forums and websites for that kind of format to get email addresses instead of the traditional name@address.com?

Yes, people who do that and expect it to work are foolish. I never use that format, but much looser things that look like natural language.

[TheAnalogKid]

Invent your own encoding and tell it to the receiver. For example: j-e-r-o-m-eATd-o-m-a-i-nDOTcom

Games published by our own members! Check 'em out!

[Jamison]

Or we could just not post our email addresses. 

[Jackal von ÖRF]

Use literal english ("my username at the well known email service provided by google" for example) rather than any standard encoding. Until they get their Natural Language Processing up to scratch (possibly not even a computable problem) that will hold them off.

I use the same method for my primary email address. This far I haven't got any spam sent to that address. See: http://www.orfjackal.net/about.php

[Jamison]

I have no spam in my new email address I got about three months ago because I haven't really posted my email address. My address listed in my profile is incorrect, not the current address; it's unmaintained. But I get next to zero spam.

[Evil-Devil]

I have no spam in my new email address I got about three months ago because I haven't really posted my email address. My address listed in my profile is incorrect, not the current address; it's unmaintained. But I get next to zero spam.

You don't have to post it anywhere.

For some years i registered an email account at Lycos. For around 2 years i got no spam at all and i never gave that email address out to anyone. It was just a placeholder office for me. So, after this 2 years the spam started...due to many open relay smtp servers....

Evil

[Jamison]

I still use my old address for posting my email address on sites or creating accounts in which I want to prevent the spam. For example, I use it on web forums in which they require you to check your email and confirm your account (only to insure it's not a bot signing up on the website anyway, so it's not like they need my address). My old address has like 900+ spam emails. In only three months of no maintenence!

use an image instead of text.

I like that idea.

[keldon85]

You can also get spam as a result of chain letters. There are some clever methods for getting new email addresses such as sending spam email claiming to give something for free if you send to friends but include a particular email address. Plus if your computer is infected with viruses then every email you get containing a list of email addresses from a chain mail could provide spam bots on your computer with email addresses.

Some bots guess email addresses too! But there does need to be a war against sending spam, or maybe a few changes made to the whole mail protocol for sending non personal mail.

[Mr_Light]

war on spam? could we trivialise the word even more so?

[keldon85]

Well who knows what we'll be fighting over in the future? We could have Australia threatening Japan with DDos attacks, for which Japan retaliates with a round of spam and counterstrike sessions 

[Jamison]

Well who knows what we'll be fighting over in the future? We could have Australia threatening Japan with DDos attacks, for which Japan retaliates with a round of spam and counterstrike sessions 

Hahaha. Maybe they can just make a PHP application that sends an email out to all possible addresses. Such as a program to loop through all possible addresses with a-z, A-Z, 0-9, -, and _ (upto a maximum of like 64 characters per name and domain) and sends a spam email to all the possible addresses; a lot of possible address, obviously. Spaming every possible address is quite a harsh retaliation.

[Kova]

don't forget it isn't all in hiding your email yourself, every person you give it to must hide it also ... I simply rely on spam protection my ISP has, very good. If there was any important mail that was filtered ... then tough luck, you shouldn't send important stuff over e-mail without confirmation

[Jamison]

don't forget it isn't all in hiding your email yourself, every person you give it to must hide it also ... I simply rely on spam protection my ISP has, very good. If there was any important mail that was filtered ... then tough luck, you shouldn't send important stuff over e-mail without confirmation

Yup, true.

[swpalmer]

What we need are email programs that auto-respond to spam messages as if you are interested in what they have to offer.  Automatically follow all the links in the message,etc.

Then there will be so much noise for the spammers to sift through that it won't be profitable to spam.

[Jamison]

Yeah, that would work nicely. Spam the spammers! 

[keldon85]

Maybe what we need is a new email system that counters spam!

[Abuse]

3 years ago I set up a 2nd hotmail account, but have *never* used it. (to either send or receive mail)

Yesterday it received ~100 spam mails.
Work that one out =/

[keldon85]

We tend to make emails containing real words or names. A spam bot only needs to assert the existence of a particular string within an email address and it will attempt numerous permutation's of email addresses using that string as a component.

[Kova]

yeah, 100 emails in 3 years isn't concerning, when you get 100 emails in 3 days, that's a problem.