At sign replacement

[Morgan]

Your anti-spam measures went a little too far. Not only does the board replace the at sign in posts, it also does it in private messages.

Just a heads-up.

Morgan

[Donna D.]

It's a board-wide setting, not by individual form or messager software, rather than an anti-spam change. Guess this is turning to into a training issue....

It doesn't matter how often we say DON'T POST YOUR E-MAIL ADDRESS. Give hints, or have big headers at the top of forums, folks still insist on doing it. Guess we have to take care of it for them, since they can't/won't.

[Andy R]

Morgan, thanks for the heads up on PM replacement of the

sign.

Donna is correct that this is put in place because so many members have used their email in posts in the past and this is done to protect their Inbox from SPAM. We will look for a solution to this as time passes. Thanks for pointing this out.

[Bigfoot Mike]

Morgan, my server got black listed for a while because of people coming, posting their trailer for sale with their email address and then never coming back. They continue to get emails long after their trailer sells, and spammers pick up the email addresses.

Because of all their spam and emails asking about their trailer, they complain to me or AOL, or who ever. The unforeseen consequence is that my server IP address gets Black Listed and I have to go through the process to clear it up.

At my wits end I decided to try Banning the [at] sign. That solved FiberglassRV’s problem but is not as helpful to members like you that use it appropriately.

I am truly sorry for the inconvienance and hopefully Andy and his programmer can come up with a better solution.

[Morgan]

Thanks all,

I understand the reason for the filter in posts, I just thought you might not know it also filtered in PMs.

[Mary F]

Maybe we could replace "do not post..." with "(at)" -- would that take care of the problem? (rhetorical question; don't answer!)

[Bigfoot Mike]

Maybe we could replace "do not post..." with "(at)" -- would that take care of the problem? (rhetorical question; don't answer!)

I thought about that and we could do that. I was just trying to educate people that don’t read.

[Byron Kinnaman]

There's an interesting method of taking care of the problem on another web/forum I belong to. I'm not sure where they got software but they turn email addresses into graphics. To read the email address is intact, to bots it's just another graphic. If you want see what I'm talking about got http://www.qrz.com Put into the "call sign" field "KE7TIV" then click on email address. You'll see my email address but it's not clickable.

Just a random thought.

[Booker B.]

In php (what this forum is running) there is an image generation tool called GD which could easily handle the conversion of email addresses to an image. The image could either be stored or created dynamically - however with a dynamic image the passing variable (email address in this case) would need to be encrypted.

Just for fun I put up an example - I would recommend a base 64 encode / decode on the email address but it would solve the problem.

http://bookerbennett.com/email_examp...?email=bookerb [replace_with_at_sign] bookerb.com

Source at:
http://bookerbennett.com/email_example_code.php

[Glenn Baglo]

It's a board-wide setting, not by individual form or messager software, rather than an anti-spam change. Guess this is turning to into a training issue....

It doesn't matter how often we say DON'T POST YOUR E-MAIL ADDRESS. Give hints, or have big headers at the top of forums, folks still insist on doing it. Guess we have to take care of it for them, since they can't/won't.

Just FYI, in my recent message I named a list, which is Flyfish(at), and not an address. Got scolded.

baglo

[Bigfoot Mike]

Just FYI, in my recent message I named a list, which is Flyfish(at), and not an address. Got scolded.

baglo

Don't take it personal. It's just a big dumb computer. Anytime the

sign is used, it is replaced by the message to stop using emails.

Who'd a thought someone could use the

in a real sentence.

PS: You can file your complaints

myserver.com

[Byron Kinnaman]

Cool, If mention that trailer with (at) symbol it'll say T-Do Not Post Email Addresses-B.