Council mail addresses exposed in council.md about researchsoftware.org

[johanphilips]

or we could generate gifs with echo -e "first.last@host" | convert -background none -density 196 -resample 72 -unsharp 0x.5 -font "Courier" text:- -trim +repage -bordercolor white -border 0 first-last-image.gif 🤓

[sdruskat]

Thanks, I'll have a look into this.

[knarrff]

Images are just cumbersome to use: you would have to re-type the address and couldn't use copy&paste. Also, they pose a problem regarding accessibility (unless you want to add an alt-text which would defeat the purpose).

Ideally and independently from the current issue, those addresses would also be linked using "mailto:xxx", which could be done using javascript as mentioned in the ticket.

On the other hand: I would expect there to be scripts that take any website, execute the javascript and only then parse the result for email addresses. The same goes for images: it is nowadays easy enough to do OCR on high-quality images.

[johanphilips]

Either way, if I Google my mail address the council page is the only hit so the obfuscation isn’t properly working. Images were just an example and yes they are less user friendly. The only “safe” way is a captcha.

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On 9 Jun 2022, at 19:40, Frank Löffler ***@***.***> wrote:  Images are just cumbersome to use: you would have to re-type the address and couldn't use copy&paste. Also, they pose a problem regarding accessibility (unless you want to add an alt-text which would defeat the purpose). Ideally and independently from the current issue, those addresses would also be linked using "mailto:xxx", which could be done using javascript as mentioned in the ticket. On the other hand: I would expect there to be scripts that take any website, execute the javascript and only then parse the result for email addresses. The same goes for images: it is nowadays easy enough to do OCR on high-quality images. — Reply to this email directly, view it on GitHub, or unsubscribe. You are receiving this because you authored the thread.

[knarrff]

Either way, if I Google my mail address the council page is the only hit so the obfuscation isn’t properly working.

Then "your Google" isn't showing you the same as "mine", e.g.:

• https://www.researchgate.net/publication/349119757_Fabrication_grammars_bridging_design_and_robotics_to_control_emergent_material_expressions
• https://lirias.kuleuven.be/retrieve/534100
• https://marc.info/?l=zeromq-dev&m=146541591328157&w=2
• https://cris.vtt.fi/ws/files/24329277/T339.pdf
• https://docplayer.nl/amp/67039777-Het-bakske-zondag-maandag-dinsdag-woensdag-donderdag-beste-lezer.html

I'm sorry: it is hard to impossible to keep your own email address secret in academia.

[sdruskat]

Having thought about this, I think that

1. Most institutional emails will be available online anyway (e.g., via institutional websites), so I'm unsure that concerted obfuscation beyond what is already in place would be worth it, but more importantly
2. this is an open source project, and so whoever wants to further obfuscate their email is invited to do so via a PR.

If this is satisfactory enough for you, @johanphilips, feel free to close the issue :).

[benvanwerkhoven]

I agree with Stephan.

[johanphilips]

Yes those hits I can understand because they are in a pdf and not obfuscated. The point is the current obfuscation isn’t working … You can close the issue and mark it impossible then 😅

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On 9 Jun 2022, at 19:53, Frank Löffler ***@***.***> wrote:  Either way, if I Google my mail address the council page is the only hit so the obfuscation isn’t properly working. Then "your Google" isn't showing you the same as "mine", e.g.: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/349119757_Fabrication_grammars_bridging_design_and_robotics_to_control_emergent_material_expressions https://lirias.kuleuven.be/retrieve/534100 https://marc.info/?l=zeromq-dev&m=146541591328157&w=2 https://cris.vtt.fi/ws/files/24329277/T339.pdf https://docplayer.nl/amp/67039777-Het-bakske-zondag-maandag-dinsdag-woensdag-donderdag-beste-lezer.html I'm sorry: it is hard to impossible to keep your own email address secret in academia. — Reply to this email directly, view it on GitHub, or unsubscribe. You are receiving this because you authored the thread.

[sdruskat]

Thanks @johanphilips. I'll close, mainly because I don't have the time too look into captchas. Feel free to re-open if you want to take this on.