Need someone to lead product management at your software company? I build high-craft software and the teams that build it. I'm looking for my next opportunity. Check out my resume and get in touch.

This is the blog of Adam Kalsey. Unusual depth and complexity. Rich, full body with a hint of nutty earthiness.

Security & Privacy

Where does spam come from?

Freshness Warning
This blog post is over 21 years old. It's possible that the information you read below isn't current and the links no longer work.

It is often suggested that if you are going to place your email address on a Web site, you should obscure it by encoding the address as HTML entiries, else your address gets harvested by spambots. It is just as often refuted by those who think about such things. After all, it stands to reason that spambots can easily learn to decode these entities and happily harvest your encoded address.

That all sounds good in theory, but what happens when the theory is tested?

The Center for Democracy & Technology spent six months conducting a controlled study to determine where spammers get email addresses from. Their report, “Why Am I Getting All This Spam?,” details their findings.

Among other things, the report found that encoded email addresses left on a honeypot Web site for six months were never harvested by spambots. Test addresses placed on the site and used nowhere else never received spam.

That’s not to say that spambots won’t eventually be taught to decode HTML entities, but for now it appears safe to use them in spam prevention.

This also shows that you must test your theories. Something that sounds perfectly sensible in your mind doesn’t always hold up to reality. It seems obvious that spambots would be taught to recognize encoded email addresses, but in the real world, they haven’t.

Recently Written

Lighten Your Process Burden
Dec 7: Everyone hates oppressive processes, but somehow we keep managing to create them.
Product Add-Ons Are An Expansion Myth
Dec 1: Add-ons can enhance your product’s appeal but won’t drive significant market growth. To expand your customer base, focus on developing standalone products.
Protecting your Product Soul when the Same Product meets New People.
Nov 23: Expand into new markets while preserving your product’s core value. Discover how to adapt and grow without losing your product’s soul.
Building the Next Big Thing: A Framework for Your Second Product
Nov 19: You need a first product sooner than you think. Here's a framework for helping you identify a winner.
A Framework for Scaling product teams
Oct 9: The people, processes, and systems that make up a product organization change radically as you go through the stages of a company. This framework will guide that scaling.
My Networked Webcam Setup
Sep 25: A writeup of my network-powered conference call camera setup.
Roadmap Outcomes, not Features
Sep 4: Drive success by roadmapping the outcomes you'll create instead of the features you'll deliver.
Different roadmaps for different folks
Sep 2: The key to effective roadmapping? Different views for different needs.

Older...

What I'm Reading