most 'spam' comes from bots searching public boards such as this one and finding "@" addresses they copy it down and voila! instant spam by the truckloads into your daily inbox. i was wondering if it's possible to hide spam from all eyes except to admins. i know vbulletin board caan do this. i know you guys may not possibly want 'pm's but you could always make it so people fill out a form if they wanna contact individuals. i don't feel comfortable with email address being so opened... even with hotmail accounts, which is already excessively spammed.

I'm glad someone mentioned this. I had strong suspicions that this forum, inadvertantly, is the reason I started to recieve unsolicited mail advertising porn sites. It started up a few weeks after I started becoming an active member here. Never in my 8 years on the net have I had this problem. It's definitly spam bots, can someone please address this issue.

Personally I have seen No SPAM in my e-mail box from this website or any other. Saying that now I will probably be in a dated with loads.

I don't think this website alone is causing all or most of your Spam in your mailbox.

Make sure Spam guard is on!!!

70+% of spam comes from registering and posting on public message boards. there are scripts or computer programmed 'bots' that need no human intervention they are roaming all message boards across the internet one by one like a virus and collecting people's email addresses down so then a list could be formed from which spam is sent.

and no i don't think this board alone is responsible but i do think the more boards you have the more spam you will receive simply because the bots, disguised to look like web browsers, will gain a greater probability of obtaining your email. and where do you think spam comes from? they somehow 'guessed' your email address? nope, most of it from msg boards. the more boards (that don't protect your address) you use the more spam you will receive. it's proven. use google and search for "message boards spam" +more

it's easy, create a 'non hotmail/public' email address such as somn @yourdomain.com and don't use that email address anywhere public, guard it very securely and you will not get an iota of spam. i have my own domain and my own email address and never post that anywhere for anyone online. i never have spam.

<<<-- Originally posted by Ed Smith :
I don't think this website alone is causing all or most of your Spam in your mailbox.-->>>

I was under the impression that the reason this board uses email buttons, rather than mailto: URLs was to keep addresses away from bots. But perhaps I was being naive.

Since our emails are only accessible after you click on the email button, spiders and crawlers shouldn't be able to see them. Spiders are generally unable to imitate human interaction to that extent.

On this board, I use an email address that I use for *absolutely* nothing else other than film and video related things, and have never, ever gotten any emails other than about film & video related things.

Email address leakages can happen in many places, and if you use your email address for various things, there's no way you'd be able to track where the leakage happened. Also, usually 'unsubscribing' to spam puts you in the position of validating your email address thus graduating your email into a 'confirmed' email database from which people make lots of money selling away to even more shady spammers.

What I was basically saying is that I have a hotmail account, and have had one ever since I joined this forum 1-½ years ago. I also have a yahoo account. The Yahoo account has just started getting spammed, I do not use that address on this forum, and it’s only for logging/ registering into certain websites.

I am convinced that registering for things through web pages gives even more Spam, also having a more recognised name in the e-mail address also gets you more Spam. Plus having the e-mail address obivious on a website will give you Spam


All the best,

Ed
.

I'm not sure if the spiders pick up on the page that you get when you click on the email button.

If you're inserting an email into a post for someone to contact you, then do it like this...

joeNOSPAM@yahoo.com

The spiders will think that is the actual email address instead of your real one. So when the emails are harvested, they will send spam to joeNOSPAM@yahoo.com

actually, that could be wrong, I was just informed that spam spiders only lift the link, not the actual text.

So, since Chris has the hotlinks disabled by default, simply entering the text that is not linked will not get picked up by the spam bots.

Anyone have any clarification on this?

spammers use more and more advanced programs. they know boards like ours use a separate 'send email to' link. in fact that's actually pretty common, so there are bots specifically written to open that link and lift your email addy. few but they exist.

the 'NOSPAM' trick doesn't work anymore. so many people use that convention bots simply "delete the NOSPAM" line and spam you. you'd have to use somn unconventional like joe&yahoo.com =). the @ is a tell tale sign of an email address.

Your registered email addresses here are not accessible to bots.

Also, contrary to popular lore, large-scale spammers do not rely on harvested addresses from public Web pages. They use far simpler and more efficient methods.

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

i rest my case.

Interesting study.

In general, though, you raise a very good point in a broader context. It's good for everyone to be cognizant that these forums are publicly-accessible. Don't type something here that you wouldn't feel comfortable seeing on the front page of the New York Times.

Using a hotmail/yahoo account is probably a huge reason for getting spam.

I've been using the same private non-hotmail/yahoo account for almost 5 years on countless forums & boards and I can't remember how many I've signed up for but I don't get any spam through that email at all.

And yet I've had to periodically clear out my hotmail and yahoo accounts to get rid of the spam.

There are a wide variety of public forum / message board software applications out there. Some make it very easy to harvest email accounts; others are quite secure. One very specific reason why we chose vBulletin for these boards is its excellent reputation for resisting spammers. It's practically impossible to farm email accounts from dvinfo. Since we've been in business, at least two of our competitors have copied us and switched to vBulletin as well, so I know we're doing something right. Hope this helps,

I've been with DVInfo.net since practically the very beginning. The e-mail address I use here, though, receives virtually no SPAM.

My other e-mail addresses... in particular, Hotmail and Yahoo, get tons of SPAM. Also, one other address I have that I use for things like "registrations" to sites, etc. gets so much SPAM that I have to turn it off from time to time.

Bottom line is...heed what Chris and Ken say. You're safe here.

The Law of Large Numbers and Law of Averages would indicate that since I have the most posts, I would also have the most spam. My posts would more likely be present and sampled by the bots harvesting email addresses. This simply is not the case. I rarely get spam at my public email address.

Chris wrote "It's practically impossible to farm email accounts from dvinfo."

In 60 seconds I did the following:

-- copied the contents of this page, just prior to posting this message, from Internet Explorer into Word;

-- in Word, right-clicked the email button in the Jeff's message above to edit the Hyperlink;

-- copied that URL into another instance of Internet Explorer, resulting in the display of the email page with Jeff's address showing as a live link;

-- repeated the process above on the email link page; and

-- harvested Jeff's email address manually.

It took me longer to write this post than it did to snag the email address.

I used Word merely as a convenience. But if I can do it with Word, any spider can follow the links and get the same result. The only way to eliminate the problem while still displaying a properly formatted email address is to render the text to a graphic and display that. As long as the links are live, there is a vulnerability. Here's the general rule -- if you can follow live links and see a result that is text, so can a spider.

What vBulletin does do is disable the View Source command on IE's menu. That gives a certain appearance of security but, as my Word example shows, it is only appearance. Had I used an HTML editor instead of Word, I could have seen the full source of the page without problem.

It is possible that vBulletin or the server protect themselves by other means, such as blocking access to known programs or non-registered users. I agree with the other posters here -- I cannot trace any spam to this forum.

<<<-- Originally posted by Will Fastie : Here's the general rule -- if you can follow live links and see a result that is text, so can a spider.
-->>>

Well that's not ALWAYS true. There are a lot of things humans can do on a page that a spider cannot, or has difficulty with. For example, sometimes something as simple as searching through a page based on the URL querystring (if you look up at your URL box, everything after the '?' is a 'querystring'). The querystring tells the php template what to display from the database - this page doesn't actually exist as a page - it is simply dynamically generated from the logic in the php page.

Spiders have great difficulty with querystrings. Even the most powerful spider systems, such as those used by Google, have problems with trying to snatch content out of dynamic database-driven pages. It's something that's very bothersome when dealing with Search Engine Optimization, but it's of great benefit when dealing with spam bots.

Will:

<< It is possible that vBulletin or the server protect themselves by other means, such as blocking access to known programs or non-registered users. >>

Suffice to say, there are indeed other means at work.

<< I agree with the other posters here -- I cannot trace any spam to this forum. >>

And this is what I consider to be the most important aspect of this discussion. Thanks,

If you're really worried about it, simply open up a new freebie e-mail account for these types of things. That's the easiest solution.

What vBulletin does do is disable the View Source command on IE's menu.Not here it doesn't. IE5.5/Win.

I have never received spam via my e-mail account here. Wish that were true of my other e-mail accounts!!!

P.S. If anyone should want to know, I am not looking for a date, viagra, or interested in helping someone get millions from their government in Africa...