Off-topic: hiding your email address - don't bother...

[Tim Peters]

[Skip Montanaro, argues that attempts to "spam-proof" email addresses
 are futile]

[Oleg Broytmann]
>    I completely agree with you, Skip!
>
>    Few years ago I saw an essay about it, and I think I saw it right
> here, in c.l.py.  My memory says it was written by Guido. Probably I am
> wrong - why Guido would write such essay, I don't know.
>    The essay said that hiding address is ineffective and impolite.

Guido did post that, and the reason is obvious if you're Guido <wink>.  I
don't have to channel him here, cuz the same goes for me, although I've
rarely bothered to say so:  If you reply to a lot of tech posts, often you
just want to give someone a one-liner nudge in the right direction,
sometimes you want to share a gripe in private, and so on -- replies that
may have value to the original poster but aren't of general interest.

If you're "processing" hundreds of msgs per day, there's simply no time to
try to reverse-engineer every "clever" address-hiding trick, so you just hit
Reply and hope for the best.  If the address is bogus, it was a waste of
your time, and later-- anywhere from a second to a week after --you get back
a bounce that takes some real time to ponder (staring at it trying to
remember what this was about, who the addressee may have been intended to
be, whether it was important enough to backtrack and try to send again,
etc).

So a bogus email address imposes costs on both ends for the replier(s), and
costs the poster potentially helpful replies.  They get spammed anyway, so
what's the benefit?

I don't hide my email addresses, and don't even run a spam filter.  I get
lots of spam.  Still, I spend less time deleting it every month than I spend
dealing with the consequences of dumb-ass spam-fighting gimmicks.  Plus I
lose 50 pounds every month, grow my penis at least 3 inches per month, get
rich working from home stuffing email envelopes, have gained a profound
grasp of the lighting fixture industry in China, and am about to get US$12
million for helping a relative of a government official in Nigeria launder
his funds.  Win-win <wink>.

discussions-about-spam-are-also-spam-ly y'rs  - tim