E-mail Scramblers

[Viken Karaguesian]

Hello all,

<SIGH> I'm soooooo sick and tired of getting spam e-mails. I'm sure that
part of the reson for this is that my e-mail address is publicly available
on my website, ready to be picked by e-mail harvesting programs.

I tried to thwart them by adding a REMOVE_THIS in my e-mail address
(username@REMOV E_THISispname.n et), but the e-mails have not stopped. As for
NG's, I have the return address blocked in a similar fashion.

I Googled for e-mail scramblers but what I found were all JavaScript based.
Are there any non-javascript based scramblers out there, or do I have to go
with a JavaScript scrambler?

Thanks.
--
Viken K.

http://home.comcast.net/~vikenk

[saz]

Re: E-mail Scramblers

In article <SdednUNOPuECGk jenZ2dnUVZ_sWdn Z2d@comcast.com >,
vikenkNO_SPAM@N O_SPAMcomcast.n et says...[color=blue]
> Hello all,
>
> <SIGH> I'm soooooo sick and tired of getting spam e-mails. I'm sure that
> part of the reson for this is that my e-mail address is publicly available
> on my website, ready to be picked by e-mail harvesting programs.
>
> I tried to thwart them by adding a REMOVE_THIS in my e-mail address
> (username@REMOV E_THISispname.n et), but the e-mails have not stopped. As for
> NG's, I have the return address blocked in a similar fashion.
>
> I Googled for e-mail scramblers but what I found were all JavaScript based.
> Are there any non-javascript based scramblers out there, or do I have to go
> with a JavaScript scrambler?
>
> Thanks.
>[/color]
This has been gone over many times in many groups. There is no fool-
proof way to prevent email harvesting.

[Beauregard T. Shagnasty]

Re: E-mail Scramblers

Viken Karaguesian wrote:
[color=blue]
> I tried to thwart them by adding a REMOVE_THIS in my e-mail address
> (username@REMOV E_THISispname.n et), but the e-mails have not stopped.
> As for NG's, I have the return address blocked in a similar fashion.[/color]

You haven't heard that the spammers run the harvest and remove all these
common words you (the collective you) add to your addys?

REMOVETHIS, REMOVE_THIS, NOSPAM, NO_SPAM, and so on...

--
-bts
-Warning: I brake for lawn deer

[Eric Lindsay]

Re: E-mail Scramblers

In article <16ybf8zwt5snp$ .9emd05ojcx92.d lg@40tude.net>,
"Beauregard T. Shagnasty" <a.nony.mous@ex ample.invalid> wrote:
[color=blue]
> Viken Karaguesian wrote:
>[color=green]
> > I tried to thwart them by adding a REMOVE_THIS in my e-mail address
> > (username@REMOV E_THISispname.n et), but the e-mails have not stopped.
> > As for NG's, I have the return address blocked in a similar fashion.[/color]
>
> You haven't heard that the spammers run the harvest and remove all these
> common words you (the collective you) add to your addys?
>
> REMOVETHIS, REMOVE_THIS, NOSPAM, NO_SPAM, and so on...[/color]

You use a valid email address that contains the term nospam as part of
the actual name. Smart spammers will remove the nospam, and get an
invalid address. Unfortunately dumb spammers will not remove the nospam
and will still send you spam. Conversely, people who just click on a
mailto link will get through to you, but people who looks at the
resulting email address and remove the nospam will not get through to
you. I am thinking of changing my address every month - jan2006@ etc.

--

http://www.ericlindsay.com

[Leonard Blaisdell]

Re: E-mail Scramblers

In article <NOSPAmar2005-904859.15321424 012006@freenews .iinet.net.au>,
Eric Lindsay <NOSPAmar2005@e riclindsay.com> wrote:
[color=blue]
> You use a valid email address that contains the term nospam as part of
> the actual name. Smart spammers will remove the nospam, and get an
> invalid address. Unfortunately dumb spammers will not remove the nospam
> and will still send you spam. Conversely, people who just click on a
> mailto link will get through to you, but people who looks at the
> resulting email address and remove the nospam will not get through to
> you. I am thinking of changing my address every month - jan2006@ etc.[/color]

SpamAssassin is everyone's server-side friend. Really!

leo

--
<http://web0.greatbasin .net/~leo/>

[Spartanicus]

Re: E-mail Scramblers

"Viken Karaguesian" <vikenkNO_SPAM@ NO_SPAMcomcast. net> wrote:
[color=blue]
>I tried to thwart them by adding a REMOVE_THIS in my e-mail address
>(username@REMO VE_THISispname. net), but the e-mails have not stopped.[/color]

Once your email address has made it onto spammer's lists the spam will
continue. The only way to escape from that is to change your email
address.

An alternative is deploying client side filtering, this should prevent
you seeing most of the spam, but it will still arrive in your POP box
and require you to download at least the headers.

--
Spartanicus

[saz]

Re: E-mail Scramblers

In article <leo-42315B.23591323 012006@sn-indi.vsrv-sjc.supernews.n et>,
leo@greatbasin. com says...[color=blue]
> In article <NOSPAmar2005-904859.15321424 012006@freenews .iinet.net.au>,
> Eric Lindsay <NOSPAmar2005@e riclindsay.com> wrote:
>[color=green]
> > You use a valid email address that contains the term nospam as part of
> > the actual name. Smart spammers will remove the nospam, and get an
> > invalid address. Unfortunately dumb spammers will not remove the nospam
> > and will still send you spam. Conversely, people who just click on a
> > mailto link will get through to you, but people who looks at the
> > resulting email address and remove the nospam will not get through to
> > you. I am thinking of changing my address every month - jan2006@ etc.[/color]
>
> SpamAssassin is everyone's server-side friend. Really!
>
> leo
>
>[/color]
SpamAssasin is useful if watched carefully - I used that for a few days.
It was much too aggressive and I was not getting some of my client's
emails. I ended up turning it off.

[Norman L. DeForest]

Re: E-mail Scramblers


On Tue, 24 Jan 2006, Eric Lindsay wrote:
[color=blue]
> In article <16ybf8zwt5snp$ .9emd05ojcx92.d lg@40tude.net>,
> "Beauregard T. Shagnasty" <a.nony.mous@ex ample.invalid> wrote:[/color]
[snip][color=blue][color=green]
> > You haven't heard that the spammers run the harvest and remove all these
> > common words you (the collective you) add to your addys?
> >
> > REMOVETHIS, REMOVE_THIS, NOSPAM, NO_SPAM, and so on...[/color]
>
> You use a valid email address that contains the term nospam as part of
> the actual name. Smart spammers will remove the nospam, and get an
> invalid address. Unfortunately dumb spammers will not remove the nospam
> and will still send you spam. Conversely, people who just click on a
> mailto link will get through to you, but people who looks at the
> resulting email address and remove the nospam will not get through to
> you. I am thinking of changing my address every month - jan2006@ etc.[/color]

A possibly stupid idea (when has that ever stopped me?[1]):

Get a username, <your_initials> nospam (in Eric's case, "elnospam")
and then post it with "nospam" prepended to it along with the
instructions, "Remove only the *first* 'nospam' to email me."

Spammers who don't try to demung will try to send to "nospamelnospam "
which is invalid. Spammers who try to demung the address will try to
send to "el" (removing both "nospam"s) or "noelno" (removing both
"spam"s[2]), both of which are invalid.

Those who follow the instructions (which spammers never (or seldom)
look at) will send to "elnospam" and their email will get through.

In HTML mailto URLs, you could try prepending "%20" (a space) to the
username in the URL. Many spammers' harvesters treat '%' as a delimiter
and the such harvesters *will* include the "20", making the username
invalid. (I regularly get spam addressed to a %-escaped '/' ("%2F")
in an "http" URL on my anti-spam page.)

While technically invalid in a URL because it contains spaces), I have
found that an email address with inline parenthesized comments (allowed
by RFC 822) will work with most email software. If a comma was part of
the comment text and a spammer stored addresses in a comma-delimited
database, sorting the addresses would break up yours into two pieces.

On my outdated CIH virus page,

http://www.chebucto.ns.ca/~af380/CIH.html

I have the following address encoded in the HTML:

%20af380&#64;( Norman )chebucto( De Forest ).ns( CIH.html ).ca

and have received several requests for antivirus help to that address,
complete with the parenthesized comments. "(De Forest, Norman)" might
be slightly more effective if it caused the address to be broken up
in a comma-delimited list of addresses but I haven't tested that yet.
(Note the leading %-encoded space which should be stripped by conforming
software.) According to RFC 822, spaces *outside* the parentheses are
also allowed but that breaks some Windows-based email software.

[1] That was a rhetorical question.
[2] A few years ago I was a beta-tester for my ISP's automunge feature
for the tin newsreader which appended "nospam" to the username when
posting to Usenet. I was therefore posting as "af380nospa m". To
this day, I still get the occasional spam with multiple sorted
addresses in the "To:" header including "af380", "af380nospa m"
*and* "af380no".
--
Norman De Forest http://www.chebucto.ns.ca/~af380/Profile.html
af380@chebucto. ns.ca [=||=] (At the Sign of the Flashing Cursor)
"Oh how I miss the days when it was easier to catch gonorhea than a
computer virus." -- Big Will in alt.comp.virus, March 9, 2005

[Jukka K. Korpela]

Re: E-mail Scramblers

saz wrote:
[color=blue]
> This has been gone over many times in many groups.[/color]

Indeed, and it's not an HTML issue.
[color=blue]
> There is no fool-proof way to prevent email harvesting.[/color]

There is. Remove all your pages. This won't prevent you from getting
spam, of course. For that, the fool-proof method is to disconnect from
the Internet and never return.

Other methods are just foolish.

If you wish to use the Internet and participate in it, stay tuned to
getting spam and deal with it somehow, e.g. using spam filtering
software. Don't make it your readers' problem.

[Harlan Messinger]

Re: E-mail Scramblers

Viken Karaguesian wrote:[color=blue]
> Hello all,
>
> <SIGH> I'm soooooo sick and tired of getting spam e-mails. I'm sure that
> part of the reson for this is that my e-mail address is publicly available
> on my website, ready to be picked by e-mail harvesting programs.
>
> I tried to thwart them by adding a REMOVE_THIS in my e-mail address
> (username@REMOV E_THISispname.n et), but the e-mails have not stopped.[/color]

Well, naturally. They don't just use addresses they harvested *today*.

[Viken Karaguesian]

Re: E-mail Scramblers

>> I tried to thwart them by adding a REMOVE_THIS in my e-mail address[color=blue][color=green]
>> (username@REMOV E_THISispname.n et), but the e-mails have not stopped.[/color]
>
> Well, naturally. They don't just use addresses they harvested *today*.[/color]

My mistake :>) What I meant to say was that the spam hasn't even slowed
down. Of course, I know it won't stop altogether (I'm not *that* naive), but
to be able to reduce it would be nice.

I get about 5-10 spam messages a day that make it through my ISP's mail
filters. For every one e-mail that gets through, there's probably about 10
that get trapped. If I go to my webmail, I can see piles of spam in my
"Screened Mail" folder.

I would just like to slow it down...

--
Viken K.

http://home.comcast.net/~vikenk

[RobG]

Re: E-mail Scramblers

Viken Karaguesian wrote:[color=blue][color=green][color=darkred]
>>>I tried to thwart them by adding a REMOVE_THIS in my e-mail address
>>>(username@RE MOVE_THISispnam e.net), but the e-mails have not stopped.[/color]
>>
>>Well, naturally. They don't just use addresses they harvested *today*.[/color]
>
>
> My mistake :>) What I meant to say was that the spam hasn't even slowed
> down. Of course, I know it won't stop altogether (I'm not *that* naive), but
> to be able to reduce it would be nice.
>
> I get about 5-10 spam messages a day that make it through my ISP's mail
> filters. For every one e-mail that gets through, there's probably about 10
> that get trapped. If I go to my webmail, I can see piles of spam in my
> "Screened Mail" folder.
>
> I would just like to slow it down...[/color]

You can't. Once you are on a list, you're a gonner. You don't even
need to publish your address anywhere, spammers will target ISPs with
random addresses to see those that work and those that don't. Any that
aren't bounced almost immediately must be real.


--
Rob

[Spartanicus]

Re: E-mail Scramblers

"Viken Karaguesian" <vikenkNO_SPAM@ NO_SPAMcomcast. net> wrote:
[color=blue][color=green][color=darkred]
>>> I tried to thwart them by adding a REMOVE_THIS in my e-mail address
>>> (username@REMOV E_THISispname.n et), but the e-mails have not stopped.[/color]
>>
>> Well, naturally. They don't just use addresses they harvested *today*.[/color]
>
>My mistake :>) What I meant to say was that the spam hasn't even slowed
>down. Of course, I know it won't stop altogether (I'm not *that* naive), but
>to be able to reduce it would be nice.[/color]

Thinking that it will slow down is just as naive. People who harvest
email addresses sell their lists, so you can expect spam to *increase*
over time once your email has been successfully harvested even if you
removed all occurrences of the address from the net.

--
Spartanicus

[Eric Lindsay]

Re: E-mail Scramblers

In article <dr61gv$114$1@p hys-news4.kolumbus. fi>,
"Jukka K. Korpela" <jkorpela@cs.tu t.fi> wrote:
[color=blue]
> If you wish to use the Internet and participate in it, stay tuned to
> getting spam and deal with it somehow, e.g. using spam filtering
> software. Don't make it your readers' problem.[/color]

Legalising duelling, or just outright assassination of spammers would be
acceptable to me.

--

http://www.ericlindsay.com

[hug]

Re: E-mail Scramblers

Eric Lindsay <NOSPAmar2005@e riclindsay.com> wrote:
[color=blue]
>In article <dr61gv$114$1@p hys-news4.kolumbus. fi>,
> "Jukka K. Korpela" <jkorpela@cs.tu t.fi> wrote:
>[color=green]
>> If you wish to use the Internet and participate in it, stay tuned to
>> getting spam and deal with it somehow, e.g. using spam filtering
>> software. Don't make it your readers' problem.[/color]
>
>Legalising duelling, or just outright assassination of spammers would be
>acceptable to me.[/color]

No kidding, I heard there was a spammer who stupidly left his address
on his website and was found murdered.

--

http://www.ren-prod-inc.com/hug_soft/store.php?action=contact