[OT] Re: SPAM factoid...

[Ian Stephen]

On Sun, 2003-08-03 at 02:57, Roger Oberholtzer wrote:
> BBC's Click OnLine did an informal test of how e-mail addresses get
> listed for receiving spam. They found that the most effective way was
> when the address occurred in a web page.
> <snip>
> My e-mail address in a web page is:
> <script type="text/javascript">
> <!--
<eyes go funny!></eyes funny>
> //-->
> </script>

If I wanted to harvest only legitimate email addresses perhaps I'd make
a website where people could submit them. ;-)

I saw what was probably the same study so made a little pascal program
that takes a comma-delimited text file and generates a javascript file
with a case statement for each name/address provided by the text file,
using nested arrays to avoid having anything a bot is likely to read.

The javascript file can be linked to from the head of each web page and
email links placed with a call such as ... 

<script language="javascript">johnDoe('IanStephen','Ian
Stephen')</script>

Which would give a link displaying "Ian Stephen".  The visible text of
the link can be the email address (default, just omit the second
parameter) or a string you pass.

Much easier to use for more than one or two instances than the
eye-straining output from that on-line tool.

Now off to dissect that example you sent and figure out just how it
works!
-- 
Ian Stephen <ianstepn at shaw.ca>