I think sensitive information such as emails should automatically be cloaked from spammer bots that crawl every forum. Humans can read the email address, but not the bots, by changing it into gibberish. Also, a bbcode would be cool too. Obfuscate what ever you wrap the bbcode around.
This is a cool idea :)
What do you suggest to "obfuscate"?
how would you define a user as a spammer vs a real user?
I see a potential use for this (hide emails/websites from guests)
that still leaves the problem though... all a spammer has to do is complete a registration and have access to any posted emails
on the other hand -- anyone who posts their email address on an open forum should be aware and pretty much deserves what they get, at this point in the internet world...
I originally saw this used on digital point forum as a bbcode. We would use preg_match to match any email address text and collect that information and pass it through an obfuscate function (readily available) online.
@illori, remember, the characters to a human would look like letters, so it would never give the end user a hard time.
@kindred, that's true, but why turn it off for registered members? we'd keep it on at all time.
You realise of course that this also necessarily makes it impossible to have the email linked directly as it currently is?
Quote from: Shuban on January 13, 2015, 09:35:44 AM
I originally saw this used on digital point forum as a bbcode. We would use preg_match to match any email address text and collect that information and pass it through an obfuscate function (readily available) online.
@illori, remember, the characters to a human would look like letters, so it would never give the end user a hard time.
@kindred, that's true, but why turn it off for registered members? we'd keep it on at all time.
this would prevent the system from creating a email to link... as arantor says...
it would also prevent users form copy/pasting the email address that they "see"
so... not a bad idea to hide from guests... terrible idea (terrible UX) to change the content of the address so that it is not selectable by registered users.
As I said -- anyone who posts their email on an open forum pretty much deserves a dope slap at this point.
You're right, but still we have an obligation to protect users (I realize this is debatable with a privacy policy in place).
@arantor, that is true, clicking the link would link to random characters. Therefore, this option should probably only be available to people that choose to use it as a bbcode.
Ah, then you don't realise that SMF automatically takes things that look like email addresses and makes bbcode out of them.
http://custom.simplemachines.org/mods/index.php?mod=495
this is probably the closest thing to what i'm asking for, but i can't seem to port it to the SMF version that I'm currently using.
By the way, congrats on your gallery mod, Arantor. Looked at the images and was impressed, it's nice.
A quick glimpse at the code and it seems it should be possible to have it in 2.0 (most of the edited parts seem very similar - again, a very quick look). But the problem is that we can't actually fork that MOD due to its missing license...
Wouldn't no license mean it's free for anyone?
Nope, it means it's restricted by copyright law. The licence is the only thing that gives you any rights over and above copyright law.
nope... exactly the opposite.
No license specified means that it default to the most restrictive license possible (no forks, no redistribution - basically, don't use this code in anything else unless you are the author)
that's real interesting, i figured negligently to add any license suggests that it's open to all. given how old it is, we might never be able to get a hold of the original author, and so would have to rewrite it from scratch.
if anyone manages to port it suCcessfully, i would love to know how you did it