[Balug-admin] And fixing the webmaster contact on the main page ...

[Rick Moen]

Quoting Michael Hubbard (michael@offroadgeek.com):

> I had set webmaster@balug.org to bounce on receipt because too much spam 
>was being sent to this address.  I changed the address to 
> webperson@balug.org and re-enabled delivery.

Suggestion:  ASAP, change the hyperlink to
<a href="%20webperson@balug.org%20">webmaster</a>

The "%20" is parsed by Web browsers as a space character, which is
harmless to legitimate mail programs at the beginning and/or end of an
e-mail address.  With reasonable luck, until the trick becomes more
widespread, it'll stymie quite a lot of spammers' scripts.

Over the longer term, you have the usual menu of variously
unsatisfactory choices to choose from.  Many people elect some variant
on the "hide from spammers" strategy, such as substituting CGI mailer
forms for all mailto links -- or displaying graphical images of e-mail
addresses, rather than the addresses themselves.

Personally, I find all variations on that strategy absurd:  I openly
declare my e-mail addresses publicly, and I decline to hide them.  

So, what I do is perform the maximum possible amount of SMTP-time
_rejection_ of spam e-mail, using Exim4, sa-exim, and J.C. Boggis's
"Eximconfig" set of tweaked configuration files and addons:   
http://www.jcdigita.com/eximconfig/ 

Works for Me.<tm>