one can design a web crawler that can see right through that very thin encoding. i don't believe it is as effective as folks think. if a human can read through it so easily, so can a machine.
I tend to ignore these ads in the wild, but I see this on TER ads as well, such as in Jayda's ad (link).
Now Jayda has lovely photos and decent reviews (including one from BeefEater), so I do not mean to draw negative attention to her ad.
My point, and really it's for the ladies, is that when I see this in an ad, I tend to move along and discount the ad out of hand, and I doubt that is what she desires to have happen.
Guys, care to weigh in with your two bits worth? Am I out of line or is this how you see it as well?
i would say it ultimately, depends more on her reviews more than anything else, if she has no reviews, i tend to pass...
i'll be honest though, it looks odd--- i've only seen that on BP and CL listings, recent occurance here on TER (from what i've seen)- but i'm sure the ladies have their reasons.....
the previous posters bring up a good point about autodialers...
it would not be a complete deterrence but would cause me to research more just to be safe.... i guess its human nature to be more cautious when deception (of any kind) is used
one can design a web crawler that can see right through that very thin encoding. i don't believe it is as effective as folks think. if a human can read through it so easily, so can a machine.
Nothing is foolproof. Of course, one can design a better web crawler, but why would anyone do that unless a large percentage of phone numbers are encoded? Logic that tries to see through encoding -- those done my humans using varies methods -- is going to make mistakes.
For example, 5.5.5.4.5.6.7.2.5.1 is easy. Five 5 * five -- four 56 *seven 2.5 ! 1 is more difficult. I can see NSA trying to decipher encryption to catch terrorists, but why would anyone trying to expend such effort for a few encoded numbers for spamming.
By the way, it is not just for avoiding spam. The encode phone number could avoid being searched on the Internet as well.
all one needs is relatively simple parsing including a lookup table of sight gags. those phone numbers are really not encrypted or encoded at all. i stick with "if a human can read it, a machine can." now the big search engines aren't going to go to that bother except on a limited basis. they have to handle stuff like finding (123)456-7890, 123-456-7890, 123 456-7890 no matter what the input. your "encoding" isn't that much harder to handle.
writing a web crawler isn't THAT hard. it's often given as a school project. an organization that has interests in accumulating that kind of information might well find it useful to have one made for their own use. this not NSA strength encryption by a long shot.
searching for the number on the internet with a public web crawler will fail to bring up the ad. so some folks may lure themselves into a false sense of security by thinking that they can use their personal number as their business number. however that is also rather silly..... since then clients have their personal number! it's better to get a separate business number.
i still think that the "security" afforded by such "encoding" is a silly fantasy in the mionds of those putting up those ads.
not sure what the purpose is with the spelling out of numbers??? Is it supposed to be cool?? Well ladies, it is NOT COOL and appears really childish and imature.If there is a useful purpose here I would really wish someone would tell me what it is???
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