posting e-mail addresses

[HomeSA]

Hi all, I hope this is not too technical.

I am a member of a Forum where a great group of people help each other a lot and they often post their e-mail addresses in their posts. I mentioned to them that it is not a good idea but I couldn't offer much explanation as to how spam baddies harvest their e-mail adresses. Is there a simple non-tech explanation, or a link that explains how that happens?

Thanks a bunch .. HomeSA

[Budfred]

SPAMmers send out SPAMbots to troll the public forums and look for email addresses... If you are posting an address in a public forum it means two things:

1. You are using that address, so it is a possible sell or victim...]
2. You are naive enough that you might actually click on an attachment in an infected email or visit a site referenced or whatever... Again, you are a likely victim...

Most forums have the option to include a link to send an email or there are ways to obscure it so that it is harder for a bot to read like:

spambotconfuser AT ihatespam.cop

or

Disguised link (spambotconfuser@ihatespam.cop)

And this is too technical for this forum, so I am moving it to an appropriate forum... :)

[HomeSA]

And this is too technical for this forum, so I am moving it to an appropriate forum... :)

Thanks Budfred