Hiding email addresses from spamers in CGI scripts

[ehasler]

I'm fed up with being bombarded with spam, so have now removed my email address from all websites that I've built and am now using a "contact me" form and Perl script to handle this for me.

There is one thing that I'm unsure of though, and that is whether the spammers can scan through CGI scripts and obtain email addresses from files within the cgi-bin directory.

Does anyone know if this is possible, or will I be safe?

[judas]

If the server's been set up properly then you should be ok as any requests to the Perl script will only supply the parsed output.

[pbrettle]

Try:

http://email.about.com/cs/phpemailtips/qt/et031202.htm

http://members.aol.com/emailfaq/mungfaq.html

www.kuro5hin.org/story/2003/12/16/114327/74

There is a script that is available for PHP that identifies a crawler and generates random email addresses persistently..... cant remember its name though - very clever and completely excellent!

And for a laugh try:

http://clubrebates4u.com/emails.php

[polar_ben]

Ed, try this:

www.hiveware.com/enkoder_form.php

[Don]

polar_ben said:

Ed, try this: www.hiveware.com/enkoder_form.php

That is very, very clever indeed. Well worth using...

[polar_ben]

I couldn't agree more - I've used it for yonks. I never publish my email addresses using mailto: & I use "disposable" accounts for registering with websites etc.

Result - <1% of my email is spam. I use Mailwasher, but it's almost redundant. :smug:

>> Edited by polar_ben on Monday 29th December 09:29

[kdd]

Ed,

As far as I'm aware, you cannot read a CGI script. It runs on the server, and is not downloaded to the client visiting your site.

So, if you hard code your e-mail address into the script you should be OK.

If anyone knows different, I'd be interested to hear details!

Just out of interest, what language are you writing your CGI in?