Posting E-Mail Addresses

[Richard]

There is a very good reason why Mario does not include his e-mail address in his signature. Do not include his or anybodies e-mail in a post.

[Mario]

Good point!

I'm still experimenting with the community system to find the best settings. In general, I'm going for best privacy and security.

Currently we are all by invitation only friends here and nobody does anything bad. But when the community opens for the public (when IMatch 5 is officially released) everybody can join the forum and search engine spiders will be allowed to index it. We need the search engines so people can find help for IMatch by googling.

This means that, except for certain protected boards, search engines and 'the world' will read your posts, including emails and links contained within. And that SPAMmers will harvest the forum, like any other forum or web site out there, for usable email addresses. It is thus preferable to not including your email in your signature and to never include a valid email address in any of your posts.

The moderators and I will to keep SPAMmers out and trolls at bay. Never easy, but worked well for the old user forum.

[Ferdinand]

I of course agree with you both.  If someone posted my email here I'd be a very unhappy camper.  But one thing puzzles me - since we're all so concerned about spammers harvesting addresses, why do you have a live email link on your support page? 

[Mario]

Have not. The email links are produced by JavaScript and can maybe processed by screen readers, but not by normal spiders. Besides, my *.photools.com email addresses are spoiled already after so many years and on many SPAM lists anyway 

[Ferdinand]

I stand corrected. 

Although if this is a standard script I guess the harvesters will pick it up sooner or later.

[Mario]

Although if this is a standard script I guess the harvesters will pick it up sooner or later.

Yes, that is likely. But the encoded part varies based on the input which makes this a challenge, and as long as there are easier targets, they won't bother.

If you are interested: http://www.mailtoencoder.com/