Email

Question: I run a dating website and find that people use the chatroom to exchange email address?

(Posted by: funkychcken on 2009-10-27 05:19:48)

Is there a way to scramble their email address when the type them into chat. I have seen other dating websites use it but not sure how to do it.

Posted by: honey bee on 2009-10-27, 05:28:18

Umm idk ,, but why would you let people exchange emails on such a site ....i don't think thats safe

Posted by: David Radcliffe on 2009-10-27, 05:37:26

It would totally depend on the software you run on the site/ chat. It would take some programming and if you aren't a programmer then you would need to hire someone to do it. Is it a custom site or a packaged solution? If its proprietary you might not have access to make any changes.

Posted by: Edwin M on 2009-10-27, 05:51:03

There is probably a way to scramble e-mail addresses, but you have to keep in mind that while people are stupid, they can be oh-so-clever. If you scramble e-mail addresses, people will just start posting their addresses in a format that your software cannot identify. It will be a constant cat-and-mouse game to keep up with all the various permutations that your users come up with. At some point, your chat feature may become unusable and your users will disappear. I guess you have to ask yourself if this is really a problem and come up with a proper response. Make your users aware of the consequences through a TOS agreement.

Posted by: Funky G on 2009-10-27, 06:36:16

The code you have that either submits their chat text or reads it from a database will need to search for an email address. You could use javascript that changes the userinput if they enter a email address. but there is never a way to stop this entierly people could type: joe@bloggs.com or joe at bloggs.com or joe at bloggs dot com etc etc etc