munging

munging

Pronounced "mung-ing" or "munj-ing," it is the intentional alteration of the sender's "from" address in an e-mail or Usenet message in order to prevent spam. Programs (bots) cull addresses from servers all over the Internet to add to mailing lists. In order to prevent software from automatically grabbing their addresses, some users mung them so that they cannot be used intact.

Munging is not always condoned. Using invalid sender addresses may violate the rules of some newsgroups and service providers.

Munging Example
The e-mail address hunter@computerlanguage.com could be munged into hunter(AT)computerlanguage(DOT)com or hunter@c-o-m-p-u-t-e-r-l-a-n-g-u-a-g-e.c-o-m. Anyone receiving a message from him and wishing to reply would have to demung the address manually before sending a response.