Problems with Asian Spam

[Tom Anderson]

dhottinger at harrisonburg.k12.va.us wrote:
> Thanks for all the encouragement.  I think we get hammered extra hard  
> because our email addresses are easy to harvest (all of our staffs  
> email addresses are listed on a webpage, "so parents can contact staff  
> easily"). 

You can use JavaScript to obfuscate the addresses you post to your 
websites.  For instance, instead of using:

<a href="mailto:tanderso at oac-design.com">my email</a>

You can achieve the same link, but completely boggle the harvesting 
bots, by doing this:

<script>email("tanderso","oac-design.com","my email");</script>

You'll just have to define the "email" function in the head of your page:

	<script language="JavaScript">
	function email(address,domain,description)
	{
	        var at = String.fromCharCode(64);
	        if (!description) { description = address+at+domain; }
         	document.write("<a 
href='mailto:"+address+at+domain+"'>"+description+"</a>");
	}
	</script>

Few robots have the sophistication to make heads or tails out of that, 
and thus you'll stay off quite a few lists, both reducing your direct 
spam and also reducing your bounce spam.  You can verify the effect by 
going to an email obfuscation tester 
(http://willmaster.com/possibilities/demo/RetrieveEmails.cgi) and 
plugging in your URL.

Tom