[microformats-discuss] hCard and spam

[Robert Bachmann]

Sam Deane wrote:
> I think you're fighting a losing battle there. To be of value the 
> information has to be machine readable, and if it's machine readable 
> then the spammers will eventually write a spider to harvest it.

You're right, as long as data is machine-readable spammers would be able
to extract our email addresses.
But I tested some - I think popular - email spiders [1] they weren't
able to deal with "@". So I think it's not a bad idea to include
this technique in further hCard "how tos". [2]

I'm well aware that we - as web authors - have no chance to stop
spammers from address harvesting, _but_ we shouldn't make it too easy
for them.

Robert

[1] http://rbach.priv.at/Misc/2005/EmailSpiderTest
[2] http://microformats.org/wiki/hcard-brainstorming#Spam_prevention

P.S:
I think this discussion will not produce futher results
relevant to microformats. Please email me directly if you have further
comments.
-- 
Robert Bachmann <rbach at rbach.priv.at> (OpenPGP KeyID: 0x4A5CCF10)