Bug#166028: clicker to hide e-mail addresses
On Tue, 18 Feb 2003, Larry Gilbert wrote:
> Drew Scott Daniels wrote:
> > A robots.txt might
> > tell e-mail harvesters to exclude the script that generates e-mail
> > addresses.
>
> IMHO, a robot that is doing something as antisocial as trawling for
> e-mail addresses is not likely to be heeding a robots.txt file.
>
I don't think it'll eliminate harvesting, but it might help reduce it. A
robots.txt on the archives would be nearly worthless, but one on a script
would be more likely to work. E-mail harvesting on scripts can be risky.
If you read a history on robots.txt you'll see many examples that show if
a harvester or crawler does not heed the robots.txt they can reek havoc
on some scripts and get caught in endless loops. I don't see this kind of
thing happening now, so it leads me to believe that even antisocial
"trawlers" don't tend to run scripts listed in robots.txt.
A good point though. robots.txt is not an acceptable resolution, but it
may help.
Drew Daniels
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