534256 - Hide or obfuscate developer email addresses

Status: RESOLVED WORKSFORME

(addons.mozilla.org Graveyard :: Public Pages, defect)

Description

[Gervase Markham [:gerv]]

The [e-mail] mailing list gets regular emails from people who have signed up for AMO but are very surprised that in doing so their email address is made public.

Is there a reason we put developer email addresses in the public profile? If there is, can we obfuscate them or hide them behind a CAPTCHA?

Additionally: often these people are signing up because they think they have to do so in order to download and use addons. The first sentence of the warning on the New User registration page:
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/users/register
should be placed prominently above the form rather than off to the side.

Gerv

Comment 1

[Stephen Donner [:stephend] Not actively reading bugmail]

We have a "Hide Email Address" checkbox on https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/users/edit

Comment 2

[Jeff Balogh (:jbalogh)]

Here's the first profile I found on the front page with an email address: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/user/256

And here is what I find when in view source when I look for the email address:

<span id="2df4580a6a33c37554fadf3fa5b13305" class="email">gomita dot mail at gmail dot com</span>

<script language="JavaScript">emailLink('2df4580a6a33c37554fadf3fa5b13305', 'gomita.mail', 'gmail.com');</script>


Are they worried that their email is going to get harvested for spam?  In theory, we have that covered through the obfuscation.  Or do they just not want their email addresses to show up?  As Stephen said, that's why we have the Hide Address pref.

Comment 3

[Gervase Markham [:gerv]]

I think they are worried about spam.

I guess neither I nor the previous person replying to emails on this question knew about the pref or the obfuscation. We will reply differently in future :-)

I still think we need to address the problem that people are signing up when they don't need to. Can we tweak the signup page to make that warning more prominent?

Gerv

Comment 4

[Justin Scott [:fligtar]]

Until a few weeks ago, the help text was above the registration form. It's still very prominent in the redesign, and I'd rather keep it there.

Marking bug WORKSFORME based on the summary.