Comments on: I Run A Dating Website And Find That People Use The Chatroom To Exchange Email Address?

By: honey bee

honey bee — Sun, 13 Dec 2009 07:04:52 +0000

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

By: David Radcliffe

David Radcliffe — Sun, 13 Dec 2009 01:58:11 +0000

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.

By: Funky G

Funky G — Sat, 12 Dec 2009 20:59:21 +0000

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

By: Edwin M

Edwin M — Sat, 12 Dec 2009 14:00:47 +0000

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.