How to Defeat E-Mail Spammers through "Munging"

 

Introduction

I guess that the first thing to mention here is "What is Spamming." For those who don't know, Spam is the load of garbage e-mails that you get on a day-to-day basis trying to get you to buy a product, whether it be pills or some form of smut. You know what kind of messages I'm talking about, because we call get them. That has become a fact of Internet life every bit as much as those darned annoying telemarketing phone calls are. You can screen your calls, but it is really hard to screen your e-mails, and becomes a crucial issue to deal with when you have children in your house. No one wants their children to be exposed to the filth that is out there in the world.

So, why am I writing this? I have been truly blessed over these past several months to receive e-mails from not only the Bretheren, but those curious about Masonry. I started out my Christmas Eve 2005 by receiving spam to my e-mail address under the heading "Suggestions for Masonic Page," which was the automatic heading that you would get in your Outlook or Thunderbird should you have clicked on my address to send me an e-mail. It seems that my site had fallen victim to a Spider.

What is a Spider?

Well, just about like it sounds. As you probably know, the WWW prefix on most websites means "World Wide Web." This term for the planetary network of machines gives rise to the image of a giant spiderweb that crosses the entire globe, connecting us all together into a global Internet community. The problem with this is there are programs called Spiders that crawl across this web looking for e-mail addresses that it can steal and dump into a listserv (directory of e-mail addresses) that it uses to then send out random e-mails. These e-mails are Spam, the pills and smut that haunt your morning in-box. Many times, web developers have a harder time with this if they aren't careful when they put up their website.

Then what can I do about this?

Although there are many supposed meaning for the term munging, this article only concerns "address munging." Address munging is the purposeful obsfucation of your e-mail text so that Spiders cannot detect them. Even if you were to type your e-mail address as myaddress@mydomain.com and not have a mailto link in the source, that Spider will still read the address in your text and copy it down.

There are several different methods that can be used to hide your e-mail address, but we are going to talk only about munging with ASCII ISO-8859-1 coding. ASCII is the American Standard Code for Informational Interchange. So, we use ASCII coding instead of the letters to confuse the system. For instance, one of the biggest things that a Spider looks for is the @ symbol. Well, if you were to type &# and the number 64 in your source code, it will appear as @. Check out the source for this page, and you'll see that the second @ in that last sentence was actually in ASCII code.

How does this help with an address? If you were to type "myaddress&#64mydomain.com," it will come out as "myaddress@mydomain.com" on the page. Check the source. It works. Anyway, you can do this with an entire address for extra help if you want. The above address can be written entire in ASCII as:

myaddress@mydomain.com

This is what the Spider sees, instead of the name. I have used this on my Masonic page as a consequence of the unwanted spam. The only way that someone can spam your address with this, is if they take the time to demung it by hand, which I'm sure that they would not do unless they had too much free time on their hands. Use the below chart to formulate your munged address. Use the letters that are in blue. Also, you can use the Automatic E-Mail Munger found HERE. Many kudos to Daniele Raffo for coming up with this.

Binary Dec Hex Glyph 0010 0000 32 20 (blank) (?) 0010 0001 33 21 ! 0010 0010 34 22 " 0010 0011 35 23 # 0010 0100 36 24 $ 0010 0101 37 25 % 0010 0110 38 26 & 0010 0111 39 27 ' 0010 1000 40 28 ( 0010 1001 41 29 ) 0010 1010 42 2A * 0010 1011 43 2B + 0010 1100 44 2C , 0010 1101 45 2D - 0010 1110 46 2E . 0010 1111 47 2F / 0011 0000 48 30 0 0011 0001 49 31 1 0011 0010 50 32 2 0011 0011 51 33 3 0011 0100 52 34 4 0011 0101 53 35 5 0011 0110 54 36 6 0011 0111 55 37 7 0011 1000 56 38 8 0011 1001 57 39 9 0011 1010 58 3A : 0011 1011 59 3B ; 0011 1100 60 3C < 0011 1101 61 3D = 0011 1110 62 3E > 0011 1111 63 3F ?

Bin Dec Hex Glyph 0100 0000 64 40 @ 0100 0001 65 41 A 0100 0010 66 42 B 0100 0011 67 43 C 0100 0100 68 44 D 0100 0101 69 45 E 0100 0110 70 46 F 0100 0111 71 47 G 0100 1000 72 48 H 0100 1001 73 49 I 0100 1010 74 4A J 0100 1011 75 4B K 0100 1100 76 4C L 0100 1101 77 4D M 0100 1110 78 4E N 0100 1111 79 4F O 0101 0000 80 50 P 0101 0001 81 51 Q 0101 0010 82 52 R 0101 0011 83 53 S 0101 0100 84 54 T 0101 0101 85 55 U 0101 0110 86 56 V 0101 0111 87 57 W 0101 1000 88 58 X 0101 1001 89 59 Y 0101 1010 90 5A Z 0101 1011 91 5B [ 0101 1100 92 5C \ 0101 1101 93 5D ] 0101 1110 94 5E ^ 0101 1111 95 5F _

Bin Dec Hex Glyph 0110 0000 96 60 ` 0110 0001 97 61 a 0110 0010 98 62 b 0110 0011 99 63 c 0110 0100 100 64 d 0110 0101 101 65 e 0110 0110 102 66 f 0110 0111 103 67 g 0110 1000 104 68 h 0110 1001 105 69 i 0110 1010 106 6A j 0110 1011 107 6B k 0110 1100 108 6C l 0110 1101 109 6D m 0110 1110 110 6E n 0110 1111 111 6F o 0111 0000 112 70 p 0111 0001 113 71 q 0111 0010 114 72 r 0111 0011 115 73 s 0111 0100 116 74 t 0111 0101 117 75 u 0111 0110 118 76 v 0111 0111 119 77 w 0111 1000 120 78 x 0111 1001 121 79 y 0111 1010 122 7A z 0111 1011 123 7B { 0111 1100 124 7C | 0111 1101 125 7D } 0111 1110 126 7E ~