

Does email address obfuscation actually work? - kylec
http://superuser.com/q/235937/6

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exratione
It's not the scrapers you should be worried about - it's all the people in
your address book. See ending comments here:

[http://www.exratione.com/2010/10/javascript-obfuscation-
of-a...](http://www.exratione.com/2010/10/javascript-obfuscation-of-a-mailto-
link.php)

While I'm certain that sophisticated DOM and Javascript aware web spiders
exist and are presently operating - at Google at the very least - the
computational requirements mean that in comparison to simple scrapers they are
slower and more expensive to operate per page examined. The important question
is whether or not they remain cost effective in terms of email address
discovery: does the additional effort pull in enough email addresses per unit
time to make it worth it? That is interesting to speculate on, a line of
thinking that touches on changes in hardware cost and the spreading use of
DOM-manipulating Javascript on the web, amongst other items. Now consider that
amongst the people who have your email address in their address book, half a
dozen have probably already cheerfully uploaded your address to a one or more
of grasping online services, or fall victim to some other address book
pillaging scam. Most of the people you send email to will have no incentive to
keep your address private, and will hand it over to third parties without any
conditions placed upon its use. From that starting point there are a hundred
ways for an email address to make its way to the black hats and spam houses.

