Obfuscative email addresses-do they really avert spam?

[JustSomeGuy]

Are obfuscatory email address receipes like
'(e-mail address removed)' really effective in reducing spam?

(I assume this requires setting up an actual email account identity named
'(e-mail address removed)' and using that for all public forum
postings.)

Couldn't spam criminals just as easily program their web crawlers or
whatever they use, to filter the NOSPAMs and INVALIDs out of email
addresses, thus negating the value of this approach?

- JustSomeGuy

 

[Adam Bailey]

Are obfuscatory email address receipes like
'(e-mail address removed)' really effective in reducing spam?

It will reduce junk email from sources that harvest newsgroup postings, yes.

(I assume this requires setting up an actual email account identity named
'(e-mail address removed)' and using that for all public forum
postings.)

Not necessarily. You can post from any address, real or imagined.

Couldn't spam criminals just as easily program their web crawlers or
whatever they use, to filter the NOSPAMs and INVALIDs out of email
addresses, thus negating the value of this approach?

Only if removing "nospam" and "invalid" leaves a valid address, which it
doesn't necessarily have to.

That said, the harvesters sell their lists based on how many addresses are
in them. They don't have much incentive to make sure their addresses
actually work.

 

[William Smith]

Are obfuscatory email address receipes like
'(e-mail address removed)' really effective in reducing spam?

I often point folks to one of my favorite reads about how to block spam.
The first step is understanding how email addresses are acquired, which
this study shows. It's a couple of years old but still fascinating.

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

An overwhelming majority of email addresses were found to be harvested
from newsgroup postings back then and I would bet they still are today.

As spammers get smarter so do their methods to unravel munged email
addresses such as '(e-mail address removed)' but we can still
devise more ways to munge our addresses than spammers can undo by hand
or automatically.

bill

 

[Adam Bailey]

I often point folks to one of my favorite reads about how to block spam.
The first step is understanding how email addresses are acquired, which
this study shows. It's a couple of years old but still fascinating.

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

An overwhelming majority of email addresses were found to be harvested
from newsgroup postings back then and I would bet they still are today.

These days I suspect most harvesting is done of web sites, as well as
through viruses attacking address books. An address that I had listed on a
web site gets almost ten times as much junk email as this one, which is used
for newsgroup postings.

But YMMV.