Inline-link email encoding

[Lou Quillio]

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| Some people dislike the encoding, however. They don't consider it
| a useful anti-spam technique, and they dislike how it makes the
| resulting markup non-human-readable.

Hadn't considered readability, a core principle.  I only think about
web applications.

What if you exploited alternate inline and referenced syntax to
trigger the encoding:

[Send me email](<me at example.com>)
[Send me email](me at example.com)

The first would encode, the second wouldn't.  I believe the in-place
hooks would make this an easy modification.

| You mean Dan Benjamin's Enkoder? Yes, that's much, much more
| clever than the silly little encoding trick Markdown uses.

Yes, Enkoder.  Don't underestimate your current method.  First, it's
easily upgraded on a snap-in basis.

Second, your method and Dan's succeed because of economies more than
technologies.  There's little advantage to cracking them when so
many cleartext addresses are waiting to be harvested -- and Web
usage is hardly shrinking.  More, cloakers demonstrate that they're
unreceptive to spam in the first place, and probably filter
aggressively, too.

It's the folks in the middle who'd be served.

Some splatter their addresses in cleartext without concern.  Maybe
it's ignorance but maybe they don't care.  There'd be no
telemarketing if a substantial population weren't taking the calls;
probably it's the same for spam.

There are types like me and most of this list's subscribers who're
serious about prophylaxis, simply refuse to lose the spam wars, and
take both simple *and* geeky steps to win.

But then there are folks who'd take an ounce of prevention if it
were easy to swallow.  They need tools too.  This battle's won at
the margins, incrementally but never permanently.  You, John, think
your solution's imperfect.  But there is no perfect.  It's more than
good enough and far better than nothing.  There's a market for your
brand of condom.

LQ


++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Lou Quillio
Box 459, Cambridge, NY USA 12816
http://quillio.com/
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++


John Gruber wrote:
| Lou Quillio <public at quillio.com> wrote on 12/03/04 at 11:34am:
|
|
|>Any chance that automatic dec/hex email address encoding will come to
|>inline and referenced mailto: links, in addition to auto-links.
|
|
| I suppose there's a chance, and the argument could be made that the
| encoding should be consistent.
|
| Some people dislike the encoding, however. They don't consider it a
| useful anti-spam technique, and they dislike how it makes the
| resulting markup non-human-readable.
|
|
|
|>BTW, I've had live spambot bait set out for more than a year (encoded
|>with Dan's method), and none of the accounts has attracted any spam.
|>Sure it won't last forever, but it's holding nicely and probably will
|>for years.  More than enough easier targets out there.
|
|
| You mean Dan Benjamin's Enkoder? Yes, that's much, much more clever
| than the silly little encoding trick Markdown uses.
|
| -J.G.
| _______________________________________________
| Markdown-discuss mailing list
| Markdown-discuss at six.pairlist.net
| http://six.pairlist.net/mailman/listinfo/markdown-discuss
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