
Is there a policy about putting email addresses in PEPs? I have the names and email addresses of a couple platform maintainers to add to PEP 11. Having the email addresses there would make it handy to contact said maintainers, but I realize people don't always appreciate the extra exposure to spammers. Skip

Ask the people involved if they're okay with "user at host dot com" obfuscation. That's used in a few places already (e.g. PEP 0). On 8/20/07, skip@pobox.com <skip@pobox.com> wrote:
-- --Guido van Rossum (home page: http://www.python.org/~guido/)

On 8/20/07, Guido van Rossum <guido@python.org> wrote:
Ask the people involved if they're okay with "user at host dot com" obfuscation. That's used in a few places already (e.g. PEP 0).
I believe email addresses are automatically obfuscated as part of the HTML generation process, but one of the PEP editors can correct me if I am wrong. -Brett

On 8/20/07, Brett Cannon <brett@python.org> wrote:
Yes, email addresses are obfuscated in PEPs. For example, in PEPs 0 & 12, my address is encoded as "goodger at python.org" (the "@" is changed to " at " and further obfuscated from there). More tricks could be played, but that would only decrease the usefulness of addresses for legitimate purposes. Spam is a fact of life. People just have to deal with it. -- David Goodger <http://python.net/~goodger>

David Goodger wrote:
If some would find it useful, here is a snippet of code that obfuscates email addresses for HTML as done by Markdown (a text-to-html markup translator). It randomly encodes each charater as a hex or decimal HTML entity (roughly 10% raw, 45% hex, 45% dec). The email still appears normally in the browser, but is pretty obtuse when slicing and dicing the raw HTML. Would others find this useful in pep2html.py? ------------------- from random import random def _encode_email_address(self, addr): # Input: an email address, e.g. "foo@example.com" # # Output: the email address as a mailto link, with each character # of the address encoded as either a decimal or hex entity, in # the hopes of foiling most address harvesting spam bots. E.g.: # # <a href="mailto:fo # o@example. # com">foo@exa # mple.com</a> # # Based on a filter by Matthew Wickline, posted to the BBEdit-Talk # mailing list: <http://tinyurl.com/yu7ue> chars = [_xml_encode_email_char_at_random(ch) for ch in "mailto:" + addr] # Strip the mailto: from the visible part. addr = '<a href="%s">%s</a>' \ % (''.join(chars), ''.join(chars[7:])) return addr def _xml_encode_email_char_at_random(ch): r = random() # Roughly 10% raw, 45% hex, 45% dec. # '@' *must* be encoded. I [John Gruber] insist. if r > 0.9 and ch != "@": return ch elif r < 0.45: # The [1:] is to drop leading '0': 0x63 -> x63 return '&#%s;' % hex(ord(ch))[1:] else: return '&#%s;' % ord(ch) ------------------- -- Trent Mick trentm at activestate.com

Trent> If some would find it useful, here is a snippet of code that Trent> obfuscates email addresses for HTML as done by Markdown (a Trent> text-to-html markup translator). It randomly encodes each Trent> charater as a hex or decimal HTML entity (roughly 10% raw, 45% Trent> hex, 45% dec). Aren't most spammers' scrapers going to be intelligent enough by now (several years since they first arrived on the scene) to "see through" these sorts of common obfuscations? Skip

Ask the people involved if they're okay with "user at host dot com" obfuscation. That's used in a few places already (e.g. PEP 0). On 8/20/07, skip@pobox.com <skip@pobox.com> wrote:
-- --Guido van Rossum (home page: http://www.python.org/~guido/)

On 8/20/07, Guido van Rossum <guido@python.org> wrote:
Ask the people involved if they're okay with "user at host dot com" obfuscation. That's used in a few places already (e.g. PEP 0).
I believe email addresses are automatically obfuscated as part of the HTML generation process, but one of the PEP editors can correct me if I am wrong. -Brett

On 8/20/07, Brett Cannon <brett@python.org> wrote:
Yes, email addresses are obfuscated in PEPs. For example, in PEPs 0 & 12, my address is encoded as "goodger at python.org" (the "@" is changed to " at " and further obfuscated from there). More tricks could be played, but that would only decrease the usefulness of addresses for legitimate purposes. Spam is a fact of life. People just have to deal with it. -- David Goodger <http://python.net/~goodger>

David Goodger wrote:
If some would find it useful, here is a snippet of code that obfuscates email addresses for HTML as done by Markdown (a text-to-html markup translator). It randomly encodes each charater as a hex or decimal HTML entity (roughly 10% raw, 45% hex, 45% dec). The email still appears normally in the browser, but is pretty obtuse when slicing and dicing the raw HTML. Would others find this useful in pep2html.py? ------------------- from random import random def _encode_email_address(self, addr): # Input: an email address, e.g. "foo@example.com" # # Output: the email address as a mailto link, with each character # of the address encoded as either a decimal or hex entity, in # the hopes of foiling most address harvesting spam bots. E.g.: # # <a href="mailto:fo # o@example. # com">foo@exa # mple.com</a> # # Based on a filter by Matthew Wickline, posted to the BBEdit-Talk # mailing list: <http://tinyurl.com/yu7ue> chars = [_xml_encode_email_char_at_random(ch) for ch in "mailto:" + addr] # Strip the mailto: from the visible part. addr = '<a href="%s">%s</a>' \ % (''.join(chars), ''.join(chars[7:])) return addr def _xml_encode_email_char_at_random(ch): r = random() # Roughly 10% raw, 45% hex, 45% dec. # '@' *must* be encoded. I [John Gruber] insist. if r > 0.9 and ch != "@": return ch elif r < 0.45: # The [1:] is to drop leading '0': 0x63 -> x63 return '&#%s;' % hex(ord(ch))[1:] else: return '&#%s;' % ord(ch) ------------------- -- Trent Mick trentm at activestate.com

Trent> If some would find it useful, here is a snippet of code that Trent> obfuscates email addresses for HTML as done by Markdown (a Trent> text-to-html markup translator). It randomly encodes each Trent> charater as a hex or decimal HTML entity (roughly 10% raw, 45% Trent> hex, 45% dec). Aren't most spammers' scrapers going to be intelligent enough by now (several years since they first arrived on the scene) to "see through" these sorts of common obfuscations? Skip
participants (5)
-
Brett Cannon
-
David Goodger
-
Guido van Rossum
-
skip@pobox.com
-
Trent Mick