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, skip@pobox.com skip@pobox.com wrote:

...

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.

-- --Guido van Rossum (home page: http://www.python.org/~guido/) _______________________________________________ Python-Dev mailing list Python-Dev@python.org http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-dev Unsubscribe: http://mail.python.org/mailman/options/python-dev/brett%40python.org

David Goodger wrote:

On 8/20/07, Brett Cannon brett@python.org wrote:

...

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.

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.

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="&#x6D;&#97;&#105;&#108;&#x74;&#111;:&#102;&#111; # &#111;&#64;&#101;x&#x61;&#109;&#x70;&#108;&#x65;&#x2E; # &#99;&#111;&#109;">&#102;&#111;&#111;&#64;&#101;x&#x61; # &#109;&#x70;&#108;&#x65;&#x2E;&#99;&#111;&#109;</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) -------------------

skip@pobox.com wrote:

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?

Perhaps, yes. No way of really knowing. <shrug/>

Trent