4 ms·
So stupid anti-spam measure — email addresses as image — led (indirectly) to such huge vulnerability.
by ungzd 10y ago
So stupid anti-spam measure — email addresses as image — led (indirectly) to such huge vulnerability.
- Kenji 10y agoI think that is a great anti-spam measure. Most web scrapers are not gonna run OCR on the images of your contact page and you save yourself huge pains and loads of spam. Tell me, what is a better way? Using obscured JavaScript code to inject the address into the page? CSS hacks? HTML comments inbetween parts of the address?
- eli 10y agoA better way is to just list your email address and accept that you will get some spam. My email address is already in plaintext on many webpages and WHOIS entries. It's not that big a deal.
- m8rl 10y agoI have my email address open on most websites I've designed and programmed for decades now, and I don't receive more spam at these address than on at those addresses which aren't public. Spammer harvest for years now using many channels: buying addresses, hacking databases, using viruses stealing complete address books from people. Using images as anti-spam measure really gives you a lot more problems than benefits (except you'd use random single-usage addresses). Don't obfuscate, but fix your spam filters or switch your email provider. What helps a lot is server-side moving of detected spam emails to your junk folder and looking through this folder from time to time.
- extrapickles 10y agoThe only measure I use is a email that is invisible email that adds the sending host to a blacklist right before the plaintext email.
- minitech 10y agoAlso a great way to prevent people who have to use screen readers from seeing it.
- toast0 10y agoI have a few domains with public whois, the spam from that today is significantly less than it was when I first registered around 2000. The paper spam is almost zero, just a scammy registrar every once in a while. Email spam is probably less than one a week.