| Quote from: cpcnw |
| A little spam better than no real email on an important project... |
Something like 85-95% of all spam results from people posting email addresses on webpages. Worse, the main culprits are people who should know better, the professionals who design websites for business clients. One firm whose email system we were asked to look-at was receiving 10,000 messages a day, of which over 99.9% were spam. It turned out that this firm had multiple regional offices, and each office had its own website. Every website was exposing the email addresses of staff to spammers. The spam volume eventually got to the point where it brought the onsite mailserver down.
Another site with 20 or so users, all users except one were being hammered with spam like there was no tomorrow . Turned out all the user's email addresses were (you guessed) posted as mailtos on the website. Except that this one user's address had a typo in it. Proof, if any is needed, of where the spam problem originates from.
If something could be done to stop this antisocial and lazy habit of webdesigners, then the ISPs would benefit from a huge reduction in wasted bandwidth, savings which they could pass on to the consumer. After all, how
hard is it to put a captcha on a contact page? Problem is, the website builders can't be f'd and just use a vulnerable mailto: instead, because they aren't the ones who suffer from the consequences.
