Downloadable Outlook vCard

[Fortune Hunter]

I saw on someone's web site that offered consulting services that they provided a downland of their Outlook vCard. If you clicked it the file would open in Outlook (assuming you have that program) and gave you all his contact info and made it a file that could be saved in your contacts. I was reminded of the very old technique of mailing your Rolodex card to people so they could slip it directly into their Rolodex assuming they needed someone with your services.

My question is does anyone see a downside to doing this? My specific concern is the dirt bag spammers that may be able to read the file and put my email address in there spam database. Right now all of my communications are done with web forms that are activated by PHP so you don't ever get my actual email address. I didn't know if anyone knew if this offered similar protection or not.

[Corey Bryant]

The VCF file is a plain text file I believe - at least that is what I have used in the past to create something like this. With it being plain text, I would imagine that it opens the door for spammers to harvest your email address unfortunately.

[Fortune Hunter]

I would imagine that it opens the door for spammers to harvest your email address unfortunately.

I was afraid of that. I guess I could exclude the email address, but that seems like a waste since I want to provide all of my contact info as I would do if I were handing them my biz card.

[Corey Bryant]

You could maybe consider "protecting" the page - requiring the user to enter the proper text in a CAPTCHA form - or when you reply to a customer, have Outlook automatically send out the vCard.

Or asking the user to send in an e-mail - and set up an auto-responder with a link to download the vCard (or respond with the vCard).

A couple of ways to do it, while trying to thwart the little buggers.

[Fortune Hunter]

I have been experimenting with this a little and I noticed in my test environment when I click on the vCard link it tries to use Outlook to open it, as it should, but it doesn't seem to try and use Notepad. Does that fact offer any protection? Second are the spam bots smart enough to follow the link and find the email address field and grab it? I am guessing they are, but just wasn't sure.