4 ms·

I believe the purpose is just to make it harder (which, really, is the purpose of security in general). Of course if a spammer wanted my email address there wo

I believe the purpose is just to make it harder (which, really, is the purpose of security in general). Of course if a spammer wanted my email address there would be little I could do to stop them, but a script kiddie that just learned regex and does a preliminary `wget | grep` won't notice my slightly obfuscated address missing from the list of billions of low hanging fruit. While I certainly see your rationale for not "break[ing] the internet," there are sometimes more important things than usability. If someone can't be bothered to retype my non-mailto-ified email address, chances are high I'm better off not being bothered by their email.

mnicole 14y ago
"If someone can't be bothered to retype my non-mailto-ified email address, chances are high I'm better off not being bothered by their email." This. It is less to do with me worrying about spam as much as it is me adding an extra layer between myself and people that mass-email myself and others about employment opportunities, etc. If they really like my work and want to talk, they won't have an issue typing it out.
- yummysoup 14y ago
  I definitely agree with this on the desktop, but I wonder if it's still true when folks try to contact you via mobile and they can't keep the browser window open for reference while entering your address in their email client.
kennu 14y ago
I think the problem is that you also make legitimate use harder, like copy-pasteing an email address from a web page. In fact I think this applies to security in general. You need to balance the costs and the benefits. Usually in matters like this benefits seem to be implicitly overestimated and costs underestimated, and people just get used to living in the worsened conditions. It's probably because you can't really see the benefits, so you just imagine them to be there. And you imagine them to be larger than the costs, which you can easily downplay (by saying people shouldn't be so lazy, etc). I think this kind of thinking is bad and I don't think we should voluntarily make our own lives worse in every possible opportunity we get.

mnicole 14y ago

"If someone can't be bothered to retype my non-mailto-ified email address, chances are high I'm better off not being bothered by their email." This. It is less to do with me worrying about spam as much as it is me adding an extra layer between myself and people that mass-email myself and others about employment opportunities, etc. If they really like my work and want to talk, they won't have an issue typing it out.

yummysoup 14y ago
I definitely agree with this on the desktop, but I wonder if it's still true when folks try to contact you via mobile and they can't keep the browser window open for reference while entering your address in their email client.

kennu 14y ago

I think the problem is that you also make legitimate use harder, like copy-pasteing an email address from a web page. In fact I think this applies to security in general. You need to balance the costs and the benefits. Usually in matters like this benefits seem to be implicitly overestimated and costs underestimated, and people just get used to living in the worsened conditions. It's probably because you can't really see the benefits, so you just imagine them to be there. And you imagine them to be larger than the costs, which you can easily downplay (by saying people shouldn't be so lazy, etc). I think this kind of thinking is bad and I don't think we should voluntarily make our own lives worse in every possible opportunity we get.