Munging is an internet slang term used to refer to the act of altering or obfuscating sensitive information, such as personal email addresses or phone numbers, to prevent it from being easily harvested or misused by spambots or data scrapers.
Example 1:
When posting his contact details on a public forum, Joe decided to practice email munging by replacing the “@” symbol with the word “at” and adding some random characters to his address (e.g., joesmith1234[at]emaildotcom). This makes it harder for automated bots to recognize and collect his email for spam purposes.
Example 2:
Jane’s website faced a lot of spam comments, including those from bots collecting phone numbers. To protect the privacy of her users, she implemented phone number munging by displaying the number as an image, using special characters, or inserting spaces between digits (e.g., 555-123-4567 could become 555‑123‑4567). By munging the phone numbers, Jane ensured that they remain readable to humans but are more challenging for automated systems to extract.
0 responses to “Munging”