hiding e-mail adresses needed badly

[John-Mark Gurney]

Poul-Henning Kamp wrote this message on Wed, Oct 15, 2003 at 16:02 +0200:
> And I personally think that by "hiding" the email addresses, you concede
> defeat to the spammers.  I don't want to let a bunch of low-life
> con-men decide how I can and should use the InterNet.

I object to any obfuscating of email addresses.  Once we start doing
that we are no long are easily visible project.  I personlly think
projects that obfuscate email addresses are lame and won't pay
much attention to the project.  If we do start obfuscating email
addresses, I request that my email address NOT be.  I do not want to
hide behind a fake barrier.

Do you really think that email harvesters haven't learned how to deal
with obfuscated email addresses?  Then there are always the really
funny ones that put in their webpage:
<a href="mailto:someone at somedomain.com">someone at somedomain dot com</a>
Ummm, hello!! you just put your bloody email address in the clear in the
href!!  Stupid!

Spam needs to be addressed at a different level than simply trying to
hide your email.  Remeber the whole security through obscurity is no
security at all?  This is just another part of it.

It would be good to get a list of rules that do things like have a
list of people that are known to always sign their email with a pgp/gpg
key, and always accept mail from them, etc.

Sorry for the little rant about this.  I don't want to see the FreeBSD
project alienate it's users due to trying to block developers from spam.

-- 
  John-Mark Gurney				Voice: +1 415 225 5579

     "All that I will do, has been done, All that I have, has not."