How to get rid of Ebay spam?

June 26, 2004 8:28 AM

SpamFilter: I do some html stuff for friends who run an micro-business which involves lots of sales on eBay. The email address they use for their eBay sales is getting absoloutly flooded with spam - so much so that its nearly unusable. Given the restrictions on what kind of markup code you can put in eBay auctions and have work, can anyone suggest a way that we can somehow encode or camoflauge the address in the auction so that the spam decreases?
(I've already tried this to no avail - eBay's code turns it back into standard characters when we view the source code.)
posted by anastasiav to Computers & Internet (18 answers total)

I'm afraid it's too late for you, mostly. That address is loose in the wild, being sold across the world, and it will continue to receive spam until the sun explodes. You need a client- or server-side anti-spam solution now.
posted by Mo Nickels at 8:32 AM on June 26, 2004

Response by poster: We would be willing to migrate to a new address, if that was necessary.

Some other details: The email provided along with their hosting package has a web interface they use 90% of the time (to read their email remotely). I can (and have) blocked the spam from coming in when they actually download their mail, but they routinely open the web interface to find fourty or fifty messages, only one or two of which is actually for them, the rest is junk, and I can't block it between the server and the web interface. I've suggested a gmail account, or redirecting the domain-based email to a gmail account, but they won't go for that.
posted by anastasiav at 8:34 AM on June 26, 2004

Why not just write "[e-mail]"?
Siurely people will know what to do.
posted by signal at 8:52 AM on June 26, 2004

Hi Anastasia
I just read this, where the address is displayed normally, but written in javascript, so it doesn't get scraped. Worth a look.
posted by theora55 at 8:52 AM on June 26, 2004

SpamAssassin.

Unfortunately, it requires fairly involved email forwarding, or using a Linux box to read your email.

Also, obfuscate all addresses using tables or even javascript. That won't save you from the more sophisticated kinds of spammers, but it will save you from dumb email harvesters.
posted by azazello at 9:00 AM on June 26, 2004

Why are you putting the address in your auctions? eBay has it's own "contact seller" option which hides the email address.
posted by dobbs at 9:01 AM on June 26, 2004

I'm lost ... you couldn't maybe have done up a small jpg with your address? True, you couldn't link it to a mailto without defeating the purpose -- but let'em type it in.

Doing the [e-mail] is not good. That merely passes the problem on to the provider at bar.com. A slightly better approach is to create a unique account -- [e-mail] -- and /dev/null everything that doesn't have a special keyword you set in a procmail filter. (you tell the prospective customer to include the keyword, of course).
posted by RavinDave at 9:28 AM on June 26, 2004

The Hiveware Enkoder has been a friend of mine.
posted by gramcracker at 9:51 AM on June 26, 2004

I second the motion for making a graphic.
posted by rushmc at 10:11 AM on June 26, 2004

Response by poster: Why are you putting the address in your auctions? eBay has it's own "contact seller" option which hides the email address.

I'm lost ... you couldn't maybe have done up a small jpg with your address?

Adding the quick and easy 'email us' mailto link in the body of the auction text has been a very successful sales tactic for them, substantially increasing their sales (they sell custom renaissance clothing, which many people want to inquire about prior to buying). Something like 4-5% of their sales since we added the link have been to people who never bought from eBay before (i.e. they got an ebay account specifically to buy from my friends).

I suppose we could add a .jpg with the address, but I'm not sure it would have the same ease-of-use impact that the hyperlink does.
posted by anastasiav at 10:15 AM on June 26, 2004

Rather than providing a mailto: link in the wild -- which guarantees you'll be screwed -- why not just provide a link to a web form-to-mail script? Ease of use is still there, but the address isn't revealed.

Of course, that would have the same effect as linking to eBay's "contact seller" page, which would probably be just fine. Link text that says "email us!" but takes you to either one of these options ought to be clicked just as often as the same link text with a mailto:. It's likely that people aren't using the "contact seller" link because they aren't seeing it as clearly as they're seeing whatever you use now.

Also: that address is hosed and will get spam for years. Get a new one.
posted by majick at 10:40 AM on June 26, 2004

Find a hosting/email provider that uses Brightmail anti-spam software.

SpamAssassin is good, but Brightmail is near perfect.

Unfortunately, Brightmail doesn't deal with consumers directly, only business, ISP, and hosting customers.

If the people that host the email address use Brightmail, the spam will be dramatically reduced.

Good luck.
posted by Argyle at 11:55 AM on June 26, 2004

Hmmm... I was looking at Craigslist the other day, and they have a cool 'anonymizer' system that sets up a temporary email address ([e-mail], for example) which forwards to your secret, real email address. Then, after a period of time (once your auction is over, for example), the temporary email address is destroyed, which takes care of any latent spam problems.

From the little scripting I know, this doesn't sound like it would be too difficult to code, but would probably require having your own server, or at least being on good terms with whoever runs your server.
posted by kaibutsu at 5:19 AM on June 27, 2004

Use SpamGourmet to create functionally unlimited disposable email addresses.
posted by Zed_Lopez at 8:02 AM on June 27, 2004

As a general rule, I've found that that client-side Bayesian filters work pretty darn well. (I use SpamBayes as an
Outlook add-in, but I've also installed a similar product on my wife's OS X Entourage client. The name of that one escapes me right now, but there are plenty out there.)

You've got to accept the throughput of the incoming spam, but once the filters are well-trained, they do a great job of sorting out the spam from the legitimate mail. They also don't require any coordination with your ISP or server admin.

One of the advantages, especially for an address that's business-focused, is that you do actually receive all the mail, and it's just kept locally in a "Spam" folder for you to review and delete periodically. I know a lot of the better server-based spam products keep a pool of "spam" for you to review as well, but a lot of them have a browser-based interface, and they'll delete messages after an expiration period or message-count limit gets tripped.
posted by LairBob at 8:09 AM on June 27, 2004

hen, after a period of time (once your auction is over, for example), the temporary email address is destroyed, which takes care of any latent spam problems. From the little scripting I know, this doesn't sound like it would be too difficult to code, but would probably require having your own server, or at least being on good terms with whoever runs your server. posted by kaibutsu

Actually, if you even have base email admin access at the host, you could do it the slacker way too. Most host accounts have X number of email accounts. Just set up an account per auction, then when the auction is over, just turn off that address, and insert a new one for the next auction.

Keep your "contact me" ebay address as a static non-changing (and hidden) address, and all should be good with the world.

I think I'm going to do something similar when I get my ebay store set up.
posted by dejah420 at 8:38 AM on June 27, 2004

I second SpamBayes, although you need to spend a not insignificant period of time - days to weeks, depending on how much legitimate and spam mail you get - training the system. In an effort to avoid false negatives (which it does well) you have to wade through a lot of false positives. It works best when you have a roughly equal amount of spam and good messages to start with.
posted by PrinceValium at 9:08 AM on June 27, 2004

Use a JavaScript for your mailto link, but NOT one of those JavaScripts that simply writes out the mailto link. Spammers are wise to that and are now using the IE engine to execute the embedded scripts in a page that generate HTML so that they can harvest these sorts of addresses. Instead, your mailto link should have an onClick handler that stuffs the real e-mail address (generated via a script from its parts) into the link's href attribute. Spammers still aren't executing onClick handlers. The URL as written in the link tag should go to a form-to-mail script or something of that nature, so that users without JavaScript enabled can still contact you. For this, I prefer a script that requests only the sender's e-mail address, then sends them a form message to which they reply to initiate contact. That way, they have to provide their e-mail address to get yours, and the conversation stays in their preferred e-mail client. If you're really paranoid, your script can randomly generate an e-mail address for each request, and whitelist each of them for a period of time.

These operate under the assumption that the best anti-spam technique is to keep spammers from getting your e-mail address in the first place.
posted by kindall at 9:25 AM on June 27, 2004