spamblock

The problem with the spam blocks is that it's the analogy of running away and hiding to avoid problem that's here to stay unless the people fight. The another is that it hurts legitimate communication.

Here's a part of newsgroup posting of mine that tells why spam blocks are kind of silly...

Here's a good example that illustrates perfectly why I think address munging isn't a exactly an effective thing:

"If you want to E-mail me, the first part of my E-mail address is

n = 7
p = [ -9.8611e-02, 2.3125e+00, -2.1215e+01, 9.6354e+01, -2.2619e+02,
2.5683e+02, 1.1000e+01 ]

and the second part of my E-mail address is

n = 6
p = [ -0.97355, 15.73624, -90.37146, 212.76845, -142.54711,
-130.65572, 241.04315 ]

My E-mail address is in this notation to stop spammers, because I hope the spam bots aren't smart enough to figure out the address."

Ask me if you can't figure that out. I may give you some clues. =) [Or, you can take a look here...]

The point is: A spam trap is an obstacle for the legitimate users. Sure, in most of the cases I can easily figure out the real E-mail, in some cases it's more or less impossible...

spamblock /spam'blok/ n.

[poss. by analogy to sunblock] Text inserted in an email address to render it invalid and thus useless to spammers. For example, the address `jrandom@hacker.org' might be transformed to `jrandom@NOSPAM.hacker.org'. Adding spamblock to an address is often referred to as `munging' it (see munge)-. This evasion tactic depends on the fact that most spammers collect names with some sort of address harvester on volumes too high to de-mung by hand, but individual humans reading an email message can readily spot and remove a spamblock in the From address.

Note: This is not actually a very effective tactic, and may already be passing out of use in early 1999 after about two years of life. In both mail and news, it's essentially impossible to keep a smart address harvester from mining out the addresses in the message header and trace lines. Therefore the only people who can be protected are third parties mentioned by email address in the message - not a common enough case to interest spammers.

--The Jargon File version 4.3.1, ed. ESR, autonoded by rescdsk.