suggestion: hide email addresses.

[Yi Fong Yu]

most 'spam' comes from bots searching public boards such as this one and finding "@" addresses they copy it down and voila! instant spam by the truckloads into your daily inbox. i was wondering if it's possible to hide spam from all eyes except to admins. i know vbulletin board caan do this. i know you guys may not possibly want 'pm's but you could always make it so people fill out a form if they wanna contact individuals. i don't feel comfortable with email address being so opened... even with hotmail accounts, which is already excessively spammed.

[Glen Elliott]

I'm glad someone mentioned this. I had strong suspicions that this forum, inadvertantly, is the reason I started to recieve unsolicited mail advertising porn sites. It started up a few weeks after I started becoming an active member here. Never in my 8 years on the net have I had this problem. It's definitly spam bots, can someone please address this issue.

[Ed Smith]

Personally I have seen No SPAM in my e-mail box from this website or any other. Saying that now I will probably be in a dated with loads.

I don't think this website alone is causing all or most of your Spam in your mailbox.

Make sure Spam guard is on!!!

[Yi Fong Yu]

70+% of spam comes from registering and posting on public message boards. there are scripts or computer programmed 'bots' that need no human intervention they are roaming all message boards across the internet one by one like a virus and collecting people's email addresses down so then a list could be formed from which spam is sent.

and no i don't think this board alone is responsible but i do think the more boards you have the more spam you will receive simply because the bots, disguised to look like web browsers, will gain a greater probability of obtaining your email. and where do you think spam comes from? they somehow 'guessed' your email address? nope, most of it from msg boards. the more boards (that don't protect your address) you use the more spam you will receive. it's proven. use google and search for "message boards spam" +more

it's easy, create a 'non hotmail/public' email address such as somn @yourdomain.com and don't use that email address anywhere public, guard it very securely and you will not get an iota of spam. i have my own domain and my own email address and never post that anywhere for anyone online. i never have spam.

<<<-- Originally posted by Ed Smith :
I don't think this website alone is causing all or most of your Spam in your mailbox.-->>>

[Nigel Moore]

I was under the impression that the reason this board uses email buttons, rather than mailto: URLs was to keep addresses away from bots. But perhaps I was being naive.

[Imran Zaidi]

Since our emails are only accessible after you click on the email button, spiders and crawlers shouldn't be able to see them. Spiders are generally unable to imitate human interaction to that extent.

On this board, I use an email address that I use for *absolutely* nothing else other than film and video related things, and have never, ever gotten any emails other than about film & video related things.

Email address leakages can happen in many places, and if you use your email address for various things, there's no way you'd be able to track where the leakage happened. Also, usually 'unsubscribing' to spam puts you in the position of validating your email address thus graduating your email into a 'confirmed' email database from which people make lots of money selling away to even more shady spammers.

[Ed Smith]

What I was basically saying is that I have a hotmail account, and have had one ever since I joined this forum 1-½ years ago. I also have a yahoo account. The Yahoo account has just started getting spammed, I do not use that address on this forum, and it’s only for logging/ registering into certain websites.

I am convinced that registering for things through web pages gives even more Spam, also having a more recognised name in the e-mail address also gets you more Spam. Plus having the e-mail address obivious on a website will give you Spam


All the best,

Ed
.

[Brad Simmons]

I'm not sure if the spiders pick up on the page that you get when you click on the email button.

If you're inserting an email into a post for someone to contact you, then do it like this...

joeNOSPAM@yahoo.com

The spiders will think that is the actual email address instead of your real one. So when the emails are harvested, they will send spam to joeNOSPAM@yahoo.com

[Brad Simmons]

actually, that could be wrong, I was just informed that spam spiders only lift the link, not the actual text.

So, since Chris has the hotlinks disabled by default, simply entering the text that is not linked will not get picked up by the spam bots.

Anyone have any clarification on this?

[Yi Fong Yu]

spammers use more and more advanced programs. they know boards like ours use a separate 'send email to' link. in fact that's actually pretty common, so there are bots specifically written to open that link and lift your email addy. few but they exist.

the 'NOSPAM' trick doesn't work anymore. so many people use that convention bots simply "delete the NOSPAM" line and spam you. you'd have to use somn unconventional like joe&yahoo.com =). the @ is a tell tale sign of an email address.

[Ken Tanaka]

Your registered email addresses here are not accessible to bots.

Also, contrary to popular lore, large-scale spammers do not rely on harvested addresses from public Web pages. They use far simpler and more efficient methods.

[Yi Fong Yu]

http://www.cdt.org/speech/spam/030319spamreport.shtml

i rest my case.

[Ken Tanaka]

Interesting study.

In general, though, you raise a very good point in a broader context. It's good for everyone to be cognizant that these forums are publicly-accessible. Don't type something here that you wouldn't feel comfortable seeing on the front page of the New York Times.

[Michael Wisniewski]

Using a hotmail/yahoo account is probably a huge reason for getting spam.

I've been using the same private non-hotmail/yahoo account for almost 5 years on countless forums & boards and I can't remember how many I've signed up for but I don't get any spam through that email at all.

And yet I've had to periodically clear out my hotmail and yahoo accounts to get rid of the spam.

[Chris Hurd]

There are a wide variety of public forum / message board software applications out there. Some make it very easy to harvest email accounts; others are quite secure. One very specific reason why we chose vBulletin for these boards is its excellent reputation for resisting spammers. It's practically impossible to farm email accounts from dvinfo. Since we've been in business, at least two of our competitors have copied us and switched to vBulletin as well, so I know we're doing something right. Hope this helps,