On 2/28/01 12:02 PM, "JC Dill" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> robots.txt is widely ignored by spammer email harvester robots.
Actually, I assume it's universally ignored, so I don't depend on it.
> I've been told (but not personally verified) that if the actual archive
> files are not linkable except through a search interface, they will not be
> spidered.
That's good enough to keep them out of the global search engines, which is a
big start, but not enough. It depends on how much whoever is harvesting
wants to harvest.
> It's pretty hard to write a spider that can intelligently go
> through a search interface, so most email harvester robots don't
> try. There's enough of the web out there that they can't spider through
> all of it anyway.
Security through obscurity is a bad idea. To some degree, even the best of
protections is more "make it so hard to steal my car they go steal yours
instead" things.
> I do know that I get zero spam via the email addresses that are listed for
> several different egroups/yahoo groups lists, even though I've been on
> several of these lists for over 2 years. And none of the addresses used on
> those groups is findable with a web search.
You're lucky. I haven't been so lucky.
FWIW, it took me under 4 days to get my first spam from the e-mail address I
registered on slashdot. It doesn't take long these days.
--
Chuq Von Rospach, Internet Gnome <http://www.chuqui.com>
[<[EMAIL PROTECTED]> = <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> = <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>]
Yes, yes, I've finally finished my home page. Lucky you.
To the optimist, the glass is half full.
To the pessimist, the glass is half empty.
To the engineer, the glass is twice as big as it needs to be.
