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Publishing email addresses

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Author: pwillener, Location: Japan

Posted: Sat Apr 12, 2008 8:43 am Post subject: Publishing email addresses

I think this forum should not publish email addresses, i.e. should not make them available to harvesting bots.

Currently email addresses are prefixed with 'mailto:', which makes them clickable, but also highly findable for harvesting bots. But even without that prefix, unmunged email addresses can be easily found and harvested.

Many forum regulars manually mung email addresses, but I think this task should not rest with the poster, but with the forum software.

What I propose: the forum software should automatically mung email addresses when found. At the same time it should be visibly marked as munged, and also posted in a way so that forum members can still copy and paste it.

A suggestion how to achieve this

Code:

[i][color=orange]name[/color][color=orange]@[/color][color=orange]domain[/color][color=orange].[/color][color=orange]tld[/color][/i]

This address would be published as name@domain.tld; it can be copied by forum users, but highly unlikely be spotted by bots.

I know this is probably not as easy to implement as I think it is; i.e. what to do if someone quotes a post with a munged email address - would it/should it appear plain unmunged, then be munged again when posted?

Author: Paul,

Posted: Sat Apr 12, 2008 5:29 pm Post subject:

Good suggestion.

Author: Ikeb,

Posted: Sat Apr 12, 2008 6:02 pm Post subject:

Pat, if you could locate a phpBB mod, it would make life so much easier....

Author: pwillener, Location: Japan

Posted: Mon Apr 14, 2008 4:05 am Post subject:

I think I found something: http://www.phpbb.com/community/viewtopic.php?f=94&t=238602 (Posted email JS; using JavaScript to hide addresses from bots).

I wonder what will happen to users who have JS disabled on their browser; will they not be able to see a posted email address?

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