| • Science | • People | • Locations | • Timeline |
The intent of disguising an address is to prevent the use of software recognition while giving enough clues for a human reader to easily reconstruct the original address. An undisguised E-mail address in the form "no-one@example.com" is easily recognised by computer software, allowing large-scale harvesting of publicly available addresses. Addresses posted on usenet or webpages are both vulnerable to this. There is no need to use disguise on private E-mail as private messages between individuals are not subject to scanning by spammers. However E-mail sent to a mailing list, which is then archived or passed onto a usenet newsserver and made public, may eventually be scanned.
The most common method of disguising an address is to replace the "@" symbol with the word "at", and any "." with "(dot)" -- giving a result that does not look like an E-mail at all. Other methods involve manipulating the address so that it is incorrect but still recognisable as an address, and leaving human-readable instructions for recovery of the original in the signature block of the E-Mail or usenet post. However these methods are less satisfactory, as anything resembling an address will attract harvesters and attempts at spam. So the following points are important:
| Disguised address | How to recover the original address |
|---|---|
| no-one at example dot org | Replace "at" with "@", and "dot" with "." |
| no-one@elpmaxe.co.uk.invalid | Reverse domain nameA domain name is the unique name of a computer on the Internet that distinguishes it from the rest. Every website on the Internet is hosted on a computer (server). Each server has a unique IP address which is nothing but a unique set of numbers, such as " example remove .invalid |
| ten.elpmaxe@eno-on | Reverse the entire address |
| no-one@exampleREMOVEME.com.invalid | Instructions in the address itself; remove .invalid |
| no-one@exampleARCHIMEDES.com.invalid | Remove the mathematician; remove .invalid |
| no-one@example.com.invalid; s/example/no-where/ | Substitute no-where for example; remove .invalid; See Sedsed (which stands for S tream ED itor) is a simple but powerful computer program used to apply various pre-specified textual transformations to a sequential stream of text data. It reads input files line by line, edits each line according to rules specifi for a description of the s// syntax |
Disguising addresses makes it more difficult for people to send E-mail to each other and is, at best, a workaroundA workaround is a bypass of a recognized problem in a system. A workaround is typically a temporary fix that implies that a genuine solution to the problem is needed. Frequently workarounds are as creative as true solutions, involving out-of-the-box think for the problem of spamSpam by e-mail is one type of spamming that involves sending identical or nearly identical messages to thousands (or millions) of recipients. Addresses of recipients are often harvested from Usenet postings or web pages, obtained from databases, or simply. When posting to usenet it should also be noted that disguising an email address is, in the strictest terms, a violation of RFCAlternate meaning: A Request for Comments (RFC) document is one of a series of numbered Internet informational documents and standards widely followed by commercial software and freeware in the Internet and Unix communities. Where RFCs Come From The RFC s 1036. This RFC describes the format of usenet messages and requires a valid email address in the From: field of the post. In practise, few people follow this so strictly.