Email Obfuscation Rendered Almost Ineffective Against ChatGPT

Nov 5, 2023 ·

Email obfuscation is a technique used to hide email addresses from spammers and other malicious agents. It has long been considered an effective way of preventing address harvesting, however, recent advancements in language models have rendered this nearly useless.

ChatGPT, a large language model developed by OpenAI, is one such advancement that has made email obfuscation almost ineffective. This model is trained on a massive amount of text data and can generate human-like sentences from scratch. This makes it capable of understanding written emails, even when they are obscured.

ChatGPT can easily detect email addresses even when they are hidden behind JavaScript or incomplete HTML tags. Moreover, it is also able to recognize when a user has entered the wrong characters or symbols in an email address, making it difficult for malicious agents to guess the correct format.

The implications of this technology are far reaching. Not only does it render email obfuscation almost completely ineffective, but it could also make it easier for malicious agents to find vulnerable email addresses. While there are measures available to protect against these attacks, such as two-factor authentication and DMARC, they may not be enough to keep up with ChatGPT's sophisticated approach.

All in all, it seems that email obfuscation is now almost obsolete. With the advent of advanced language models such as ChatGPT, email addresses are no longer secure. If you are relying on email obfuscation to protect against malicious agents, it may be time to consider alternative solutions.