ISS Information Systems & Services - reduce mail address harvesting

 

 

Spam - Reduce mail address harvesting

At DCU we are an open organisation like most universities. Therefore we publish personal contact information such as e-mail addresses. Spammers have many ways of obtaining mail addresses. One of which, is from web sites such as ours where contact information is readily available.

Reduce publicity of mail addresses ?

DCU have considered not publishing mail contact details by default. In this scenario staff members would have the choice of keeping their mail address private. This is in line with our guidelines on how to avoid spam. However, it has been decided (May 2004) not to remove mail addresses from our website. Instead we now employ a number of obfuscation methods in an effort to reduce mail address harvesting.

DCU mailing lists are now configured to protect mail addresses by default. Subscriber lists are private by default, as are archives. This can be changed at the discretion of the list administrator.