So, just in case anyone hadn't noticed, CPAN has been spidered for email addresses.
I have *@cthompson.com forwarded to my Inbox, and I use a different string for the username depending on who I'm giving the address to.
The address perl@cthompson.com has been used exactly three places...
I can't find a place on the first two I can get my email address, but checking Search.CPAN, there's my email address nicely formatted.
Several weeks ago I started getting german porn spam sent to that address. These were largely easy to filter, as they all contained the string "SEXKONTAKT" somewhere.
Today I got...
From: "Dr. Carter, President"
Reply-To: "Dr. Carter, President"
To: "perl@cthompson.com"
Subject: To: perl as a Good Person
Regular english language spam, though I must admit, it's not one I've seen before. This one appears to be selling some sort of self help book. Reading the copy it almost sounds like books on Scientology.
So, to HFB and crew who run search.cpan.org, I want CPAN to have my email address, but displaying it on search.cpan in plain mailto: format mean that any address I give CPAN is likely to be snarfed up for spam use.
I'd recommend at minimum, removing email addresses from the pages.
search has that address is if PAUSE has it which means the whois file in the modules dir on CPAN has it. Also, anyone can take the list of IDs and make a list of ID@cpan.org for a spam list. While I sympathise with the disdain for spam I do think that people using and downloading your module[s] have the right to know your email address and there really aren't too many ways to do that without risking spam. Perhaps you could start experimenting with spam catchers?
