[uf-discuss] Spam and Microformats Search

Mon Jun 19 10:02:26 PDT 2006

Drew McLellan wrote:
> This is something I've considered before, but have shied away from and
> opted not to include an email address at all.
>> Is 'joe at my domain dot com' a valid entry for email in an hCard? I'd
> say not...
>It looks like EMAIL is represented by "A single text value.", so an
obfuscated email address is technically valid, but certainly not what a
user expects. I suppose this is a throw-back to when there were multiple
TYPES of email addresses, and the standard (mailbox)@domain.tld was not
as ubiquitous as it is now. So the RFC was covering their bases and not
specifying a specific type. iCalendar, on the other hand, does specify
that "The value is a URI as defined by [RFC 1738] or any other IANA
registered form for a URI."
I'm not sure how address book applications handled a non-mailto email
type address?
In the end, i would agree, if you are worried about spam, you shouldn't
publish it in the first place (same goes for phone numbers and
addresses)... i think we are abit naive to think that spammers haven't
figured out how to parse (mailbox) _at_ (domain) . (tld) so obfuscating
is a losing battle. It only hurts the people trying to get in contact
with you.
-brian
according to the RFC:
3.3.2 EMAIL Type Definition
 To: ietf-mime-directory at imc.org
 Subject: Registration of text/directory MIME type EMAIL
 Type name: EMAIL
 Type purpose: To specify the electronic mail address for
 communication with the object the vCard represents.
 Type encoding: 8bit
 Type value: A single text value.
 Type special notes: The type can include the type parameter "TYPE" to
 specify the format or preference of the electronic mail address. The
 TYPE parameter values can include: "internet" to indicate an Internet
 addressing type, "x400" to indicate a X.400 addressing type or "pref"
 to indicate a preferred-use email address when more than one is
 specified. Another IANA registered address type can also be
 specified. The default email type is "internet". A non-standard value
 can also be specified.
 Type example:
 EMAIL;TYPE=internet:jqpublic at xyz.dom1.com
 EMAIL;TYPE=internet:jdoe at isp.net
 EMAIL;TYPE=internet,pref:jane_doe at abc.com