Can't the email addresses be obfuscated?
Can't your client and email tools provide better handling of spam?
That's one of the silliest things I have ever read.
I've had the same email address for eight years. During that time, I
have never, not once, tried to obfuscate or hide it. I am, arguably,
more "known" than you or the original inquisitor. Spam has never gotten
to a point where I felt it necessary to ask someone, or a group of
someones, to provide protection of my address in a way that requires a
man-hour or more of research/programming, especially in a way that would
detrimentally affect future inquisitors. I can't count the number of
times I've found a question in a mailing list archive, seen no response
or suitable answer archived, emailed the original quester for their
update, and received the solution quickly, politely, and with far fewer
headaches (signing up, lurk period, asking, waiting days, leaving).
Similarly, I'm not convinced that the archiving of his address was the
only probable cause - it could just as easily been a Windows friend
infected with an Address Book stealing virus (this is the primary
reason, as previously suggested, that people use alternate email
addresses or primary+mailinglist(a)primary.com).
Ofuscating email addresses is about as useful as using URL
shorteners. They are detrimental and damaging to the Internet.
--
Morbus Iff ( cheese and rice saves )
Technical:
http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/au/779
Culture:
http://www.disobey.com/ and
http://www.gamegrene.com/
icq: 2927491 / aim: akaMorbus / yahoo: morbus_iff /
jabber.org: morbus