email on certificate maps

I have included email addresses of measurer and race contact on my last few certificates. I have always included my own at the bottom of the certificate.

I think I will quit putting the measurer and race contact emails on my certificates, until such time as it's decided to do so. The above reasons of Dave's are persuasive.

In reading Dave’s post I think he was addressing the addition of adding e-mail addresses to the course map. There is diminishing value to add e-mail addresses to the course map. Pete’s post reads that he will be taking it a step further and not add e-mail addresses to the measurement certificate. Isn’t the directory contact information on the certificate important enough to list all contact information? E-mail has become a primary contact source.

The e-mail harvesting from the measurement certificate can’t happen at this point - measurement certificates are stored electronically but not posted. Information on course maps posted online can be harvested, yet each map would have to be viewed and the spammer would have to write down each new e-mail address. E-mail harvesting happens on a grander scale with thousands of e-mails to capture for any meaningful value.

Of course there is the remote possibility some confused small time spammer might see the value in targeting e-mails connected to course measurement. Enlarging various body parts is always a popular spam to receive, which crosses many demographics.

The USATF/RRTC web pages are doubly protected from spammers. Keith Lively and Bob Baumel have done a fantastic job to combat e-mail harvesting.

Kevin contacted me on this issue yesterday before posting the above reply, which was based partly on what I told him. Here, I will try to make the issues a little clearer.

First, e-mail addresses included on either maps or certificates are invulnerable to harvesting by the automated software used by spammers because our maps and certificates are stored as scanned images, not electronic text. Currently, there isn't any way for automated harvesting software to extract e-mail addresses from an image. (As Kevin notes, currently, the certificates aren't posted at all. But if we decide to post them, they'd be posted as images.)

Most e-mail addresses on the USATF and RRTC pages (e.g., in the Certifier list) are protected by a JavaScript scheme which provides some protection against harvesting software. It isn't perfect but is reasonably effective because there are many possible JavaScript protection schemes, making it impractical for automated harvesting software to be programmed to penetrate every such scheme. Of course, a small-time spammer, who isn't using harvesting software but simply decides to examine the USATF site, can grab those addresses pretty easily if he wants.

The "doubly protected" statement applies to e-mail addresses in the Course Measurers List. They include the same JavaScript protection as other e-mails on USATF pages, but, in addition, they're behind a Search Engine. This pretty well guarantees that they'll only be seen by human beings surfing with a normal web browser, not by the spammers' automated software.

A final point about e-mail harvesting: Any e-mail addresses displayed explicitly in postings on a bulletin board, such as this one, are fully vulnerable to harvesting (they have no protection). If you really wish to display an e-mail address in your posting, then, instead of writing it normally (e.g., user@example.com), you might write a "munged" version (e.g., user AT example DOT com) which will be understandable to humans but probably not the harvesting software.