There have been warnings about this sort of scam before, and it is very common, but as ti touched me and our club's website today, it is worth noting at least for those among us who have their own website or operate one for a club etc.

Phone call on mobile.

"Can I speak to Mr Papavgeris?" - "Speaking".

"Blardy-blardy-blah, new replacement handset from your mobile phone provider, can I confirm that your postcode is XXYYZZ?" - "Actually no, it isn't".

"Can you please tell me the correct postcode?" - "The thing is, I KNOW the postcode you mentioned; where did you get this from?"

*click*...

The postcode mentioned by the Mumbay spiv is in fact the one for Herga Folk Club. And guess what - the only place on the internet where my mobile phone number appears is on Herga's website. You guessed it, on the same page is Herga's address with the postcode in question. Clearly some automated process is sweeping the net gathering such information (name + mobile phone + postcode) and verifying them as a preliminary to either getting further info or starting to build an identity picture.

It's hard trying to evade such searches. I just updated the website to include fullstops between the digits in an effort to confuse search algorithms. And we all know the technique of replacing @ and . with (at) and (dot) etc when stating email addresses. But let's be honest - such ruses could easily be bypassed by a computer-savvy 5 year-old. Yet one does need to give out contact information in such cases.

Do you know any better methods for disguising such information, yet still making it available for the genuinely interested humans visiting a website?