Does e-mail obfuscation really make automatic harvesting harder?

Question

Many users and forum programs in attempt to make automatic e-mail address harversting harder conseal them via obfuscation - @ is replaced with \"at\" and . is replaced with

Answer 1

It's analagous to putting a "protected by ADT" sticker on your front door.

Will that prevent a talented burglar from entering your house? Of course not.

Will it make the house next door with an unlocked door and an iPod in the window a more compelling target? Pretty likely.

A simple unobfuscated email scraper is going to get TONS of emails as it is. Maybe a very simple regex to pick up very common obfuscation methods is worth the effort. Past that, you're spending a lot of time trying to decipher an increasingly small percentage of emails.

All that to say, having some clever obfuscation is probably worth it.

For the record, my email has been on my public resume in plain text for years now, because I use gmail, which has a spam filter that works.