Re: Wishlist: Please add real email address support with unlock code!

[Earl Hood <earl@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On August 5, 2005 at 03:24, saf wrote:

> when I start mhonarc in spammode it will create me email addresses with 
> hidden email addresses.
> Could it be possible to put the modified content in a kind of diff file 
> per archive?
> So I could for example restore the original message with an image unlock 
> code, so spammer could
> not get the real email address. :-)

This topic has been discussed in the past, with some bringing up
the issue that images would prevent those with disabilities (i.e.
vision impaired) to use it (this may be a legal issue for some
entities, not sure how accessibility affects web sites in general).

Note, mail-archive.com uses a POST form to return a mailto link
to facilitate reply capability.  This appears to be sufficient
to defeat address harvesters, but it they wise-up...

Regardless, an idea I had was to create an MD5 hash of the address,
and use that as the key to lookup the original address (via a
CGI program).  For example:

  /cgi-bin/get_address.cgi?m=a3deeb9262d13a9165a80298ad831ad6

Of course, the hash is stored in some database that maps MD5
hash to real address.

> Where xxxx.xxx is a link to a cgi-bin script which ask for a code written 
> on a image to unlock the message to get
> the original email adresses. So if the user types for example the right 
> code, then the script reads
> a kind of diff file to rebuild the original message. In the diff file 
> there should be written a line as like:
> 
> msg00007.html: l 30 -  Write me a message to <a 
> href="cgi-bin/unlock_mail.cgi>foo@xxxxxxxxxx</a>
>                     +  Write me a message to foo@xxxxxxx

I'm not sure re-rendering the page with the real addresses are
needed.

Are you trying to do this for all email addresses that appear in a
message, or just for the "from" address?

--ewh