[ale] e-mail address harvesting from web pages

[John Mills]

ALErs -

On reading a recent Consumer Reports article on spam, one person whose 
e-mail I post on an organization's web site asked that I either take some 
measures to impede harvesting addresses from our web site, or that I 
remove his address. He suggested a graphic image instead of text.

I am concerned that redoing text pages as graphics will cause me more work 
(though not overwhelmingly more, as I only update this fram annually), and 
that its legibility would depend greatly on each viewer's browser setup.

I suggested three alternatives:
(1) Post the page as PDF (though my colleague expects that would soon be 
cracked), or
(2) Routing the replies through some forwarding pointer to a single 
officer whose unhappy duty it would be to dump the spam while forwarding 
inquiries to appropriate club officers (not preventing spam, but shielding 
the recipient's actual address), or
(3) Presenting the user-name and mail domain in separate entries of a 
column, requiring correspondents to reassemble the address in order to 
write.

I assume any measure we take will eliminate the possibility of 'click here 
to write' e-mail.

How are other people handling this issue?

TIA.
 
 John Mills
 john.m.mills at alum.mit.edu


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