[Lowfer] ..Spam robots die!!

[John Davis]

>I agree that the message itself is SPAM, and definitely comes from a
>spammer.
> [snip]
>The trick is to create a graphic image, like a jpg or gif.  When you look
at
>the image, it is easily readable, but the letters are surrounded by a
>pattern of stripes or blotches.  This makes it impossible for robots to get
>your email address.  The graphic will thwart most of the robots first
thing,
>since most of them read text.

And unfortunately, most of the places your e-mail address appears on the
Internet, it is already in text form.  You have no control over that if your
address appears in, say, a digest of this list that's stored on a server
somewhere.

That appears to be how the spammer acquired Jim's address...an irony,
considering that the solution they're selling has exactly the same basic
limitation as the graphic solution or the "nospam" solution--it only works
if YOU have control over how your address appears in the Web page being
"protected."  If your e-mail client sends your true address in text form, as
it must do in order for you to access this reflector, neither the graphic
solution nor the "nospam" solution nor their Javascript code will do you any
good.

(A second drawback of this approach: it only works if scripting is enabled
on the reader's browser.)

BTW, there are Javascript examples available on the Web that let you
implement encrypted e-mail on your own Web pages without having to reward a
known spammer by buying his wares.

73,
John