I just saw that everyone who posts to the mail list has there email pasted on the net for spam bots. This is how a couple of my email addresses got ruined by spammers. There needs to a a regex replace filter or something for emails to get emails in name at domain dot com format or something, otherwise everyone posting to the list is going to see spam rates OCTUPLE!
i.e.
http://lists.roundcube.net/mail-archive/roundcube.dev/2006/12/seq/
Michael Phillips
Michael J. Phillips wrote:
I just saw that everyone who posts to the mail list has there email pasted on the net for spam bots. This is how a couple of my email addresses got ruined by spammers. There needs to a a regex replace filter or something for emails to get emails in name at domain dot com format or something, otherwise everyone posting to the list is going to see spam rates OCTUPLE!
Posting to a mailing list nearly always puts your email address out there for spammers to harvest - even if Roundcube changed the list configuration it wouldn't make any difference because other people make their own archives that are publicly available. Unfortunately it's just one of the risks you take when posting something to lists or newsgroups.
If it's any consolation, I'm on a number of high-profile mailing lists and I haven't seen much of an increase in spam since joining any of them and having my email address archived on the web.
Paul
Isn't it also strange that everybody assumes "name at domain dot com" is so much harder to parse than "name@domain.com" by the spam bots. The image solution is better but as you said won't work unless it is a universal effort which is not achievable.
-- Mehmet
Paul Waring wrote:
Michael J. Phillips wrote:
I just saw that everyone who posts to the mail list has there email pasted on the net for spam bots. This is how a couple of my email addresses got ruined by spammers. There needs to a a regex replace filter or something for emails to get emails in name at domain dot com format or something, otherwise everyone posting to the list is going to see spam rates OCTUPLE!
Posting to a mailing list nearly always puts your email address out there for spammers to harvest - even if Roundcube changed the list configuration it wouldn't make any difference because other people make their own archives that are publicly available. Unfortunately it's just one of the risks you take when posting something to lists or newsgroups.
If it's any consolation, I'm on a number of high-profile mailing lists and I haven't seen much of an increase in spam since joining any of them and having my email address archived on the web.
Paul
Mehmet Tolga Avcioglu wrote:
Isn't it also strange that everybody assumes "name at domain dot com" is so much harder to parse than "name@domain.com" by the spam bots. The image solution is better but as you said won't work unless it is a universal effort which is not achievable.
"name at domain dot com" probably isn't harder to parse, but I suspect at the moment most spam harvesters can't be bothered to implement that functionality when there's more than enough unprotected email addresses on the web for them to use already. I suspect though that if everyone suddenly changed to the other format then the spammers would pick up on this pretty quickly.
Image solutions don't work even if they're universally applied, it's not exactly difficult to download an image and extract the text from it - unless you obscure the text of course but then that makes it difficult for ordinary people to read and impossible for anyone with a visual disability.
Paul
Paul Waring wrote:
Mehmet Tolga Avcioglu wrote:
Isn't it also strange that everybody assumes "name at domain dot com" is so much harder to parse than "name@domain.com" by the spam bots. The image solution is better but as you said won't work unless it is a universal effort which is not achievable.
"name at domain dot com" probably isn't harder to parse, but I suspect at the moment most spam harvesters can't be bothered to implement that functionality when there's more than enough unprotected email addresses on the web for them to use already. I suspect though that if everyone suddenly changed to the other format then the spammers would pick up on this pretty quickly.
Image solutions don't work even if they're universally applied, it's not exactly difficult to download an image and extract the text from it - unless you obscure the text of course but then that makes it difficult for ordinary people to read and impossible for anyone with a visual disability.
With other words this just means that you can try anything, and perhaps it has some effect on short notice. But the 'bad minded' always come up with another way around the solution you just came up with.
The same holds for spam filters, they just become more and more advanced but the spammers just find new ways around them.
This is the vicious circle with spam, and IMHO it cannot be broken.
On 1/4/07, Pim Vullers pim@vullersmail.nl wrote:
This is the vicious circle with spam, and IMHO it cannot be broken.
The solution is that people stop clicking on viagra links in emails. Once they do not pay off, spam will be gone. ;-) With the little efford that it currently takes to send emails the ROI is just way too high since there people who click all the links and purchase the advertised "goods".
Cheers,
Till Klampaeckel e: mailto:klimpong@gmail.com
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Mehmet Tolga Avcioglu -
Michael J. Phillips -
Paul Waring -
Pim Vullers -
till