Google Groups Email Address Spider Defeater
With all the pundits following Google in the blogosphere now, I’m surprised I haven’t seen this mentioned yet.
I just thought it was clever because it’s one of those things that doesn’t get noticed by people, and then when you run across it, it becomes something like “why doesn’t anyone else do this?”.
This page explains the algorithm:
When your message is posted to a group, Google Groups masks your email address on the web to prevent automated computer programs from harvesting it for spamming purposes. When you see an email address in a message on the Google Groups webpages, it will look something like “add…@example.com” instead of “address@example.com.”
Here’s how it looks to a user:
This image shows you looking at a group, and how the address is hidden.
Then if you click on the address, it looks like this:
So the idea is that in the past, almost every message at Google Groups contained your e-mail address in plain view of spiders. Now for someone to gain your address they need to visit old-fashioned Usenet (probably their route), or click through the Google spider defeaters.
I wonder if I’m the last person to notice this.