[microformats-discuss] hCard and spam

[Tantek Ç elik]

On 7/19/05 5:20 PM, "Robert Bachmann" <rbach at rbach.priv.at> wrote:

> Ryan King wrote:
>> On Jul 19, 2005, at 4:06 PM, Robert Bachmann wrote:
>>  [...]
>>> one could write:
>>> 
>>>  <a class="e&#109;ail"
>>> href="&#109;ailto:rbach&#064;rbach.priv.at">rbach&#064;rbach.priv.at</ a>
>> 
>> This is out of scope for hCard. You don't need hCard to do this, nor
>> should it be required in hCard.
>> 
> I am agreed, it's out of scope.
> Don't get me wrong this is neither a criticism on hCard nor is it a
> proposal for changing the hCard specification.
> 
> I just wanted to make sure that the people here are aware of the
> downside of "mailto:" and the possible(*) workaround.
> As "mailto:" is used with hCard, hCard automatically "inherits" this
> disadvantage.
> 
> If someone writes a tutorial on the topic "how to use/implement hCards
> on your website", perhaps this should be also mentioned.

You're absolutely right Robert.

This would be useful in a "how to" for hCards.

Could you like to add a short note (perhaps in a new section) to that effect
on the hcard-brainstorming wiki page?


I've done something similar with the hCards on the latest draft of the
CSS2.1 specification:

 http://w3.org/TR/CSS21/

View source and take a look.


> (*) This workaround will not work for ever. I suppose that sooner or
> later email address collector programs will know how to deal with
> character entities.

Right.

The flip side is that so many of us "older" folks on the net have email
addresses that have been archived on the web in *so* many places (like for
me, tantek at cs.stanford.edu all over W3C mailing lists), that it literally
makes *no* difference (in terms of additional spam) to have one more page
with that address.

Thanks,

Tantek