Leoro-Anyone heard of them?

OTA = Online Travel Agency, which means those sites that sell the booking and take the payment for you.
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Eileen2
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Leoro-Anyone heard of them?

Post by Eileen2 »

I received the following email a short while ago. The listing is free for the first year, so I cannot see a problem, but thought I'd run it past you guys first. Anyone heard of them?

Hello,

we have seen you have a beautiful holiday villa in Corfu. Since last October
we have been running a website where owners of holiday homes can advertise
their properties. Just for a short time after going on line, we would like
to invite different owners to advertise their property free of charge on our
website for 12 months.
We would be pleased if you could join us and advertise on our website.

Your advert is free of charge for 12 months beginning at first activation.
After that it will be possible to renew it by paying the annual fee as
stated in our price list.
You will receive a reminder by email both six weeks and two weeks before
your free advert expires, offering you the chance of renewal.
Your advert will automatically expire should you not wish to renew.

1. leoro.com
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Giddy Goat
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Post by Giddy Goat »

Have never heard of them - they are German it seems, and that means that maybe (didn't check) your ad would be in both languages. Looks home made, and has been running since last year some time; seems to have a good-ish number of properties already, but if I haven't heard of them, chances are others won't know them either, so maybe the site's not very visible yet?

But if it's free for 12 months....
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Fraise
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Post by Fraise »

I've not heard of them either. The e-mail is very polite! :)
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vrooje
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Post by vrooje »

12 months free is a good price. 8)

The site doesn't look that bad to me...

...but I still wouldn't list there, at least not yet.

Why? they show e-mail addresses on property pages, linked with a mailto link which is not hidden in any way from spam bots via javascript or any other method.

Then again, maybe it's worth setting up a disposable e-mail address in order to get an inbound link. Thoughts?
Brooke
LEORO
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Post by LEORO »

Hello there.
I am the owner of the website Leoro.
The offer to advertise free for a year is a genuine one as at present I am concentrating on building the number of properties on the site.
Properties are advertised in both english and german.
Sometimes you do get something for nothing in life, with no catches!
If anyone would like to advertise, just send an email.
Like any new business, it always takes time to get established, but I'm sure that you will have heard of us in the future!
Many thanks for your time.
:-)
Hells Bells
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Post by Hells Bells »

LMHF , thanks for your info. I will probably add my apartment, as we get a few German skiers in my resort.
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Eileen2
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Post by Eileen2 »

Thanks for all your replies everyone.

You too Leoro or LMHF!

I'm seriously thinking about listing my property on your website, but one thing puzzles me.

Why did you choose a user name that is the title of this forum? Why not just use Leoro?
:?
LEORO
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Post by LEORO »

Thats the usual doing in a forum or something like that.
Hope you trust us! :-)

Constance Faack
Jens Zühlsdorf
Grenzweg 1
16356 Elisenau/Ahrensfelde
GERMANY

+49-3338-753299
LEORO
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Post by LEORO »

vrooje wrote:...but I still wouldn't list there, at least not yet.

Why? they show e-mail addresses on property pages, linked with a mailto link which is not hidden in any way from spam bots via javascript or any other method.

Then again, maybe it's worth setting up a disposable e-mail address in order to get an inbound link. Thoughts?
1. Why do we show mail addresses on LEORO at all?

We at LEORO think there should be as much contact information as possible so every user (read: vacationer) could use that kind of contact he likes most. Sure this reduces the "control" we would have to see how often our service is used to get owners in contact with other users. But it increases the owners' chances to get contacted at all.

In the end the owner decides himself how many contact information he wants to show for his holiday objects. And if he don't like to show mail address or website link he doesn't have to. There's always the contact form and this will be send to the mail address given within the owner details section during the registration. And this could be a different address then shown within the holiday object details. This address from the owner details will never be shown or given to others!

2. How LEORO prevents spamming for mail addresses shown at holiday object details?

There are many different ways to get your mail address into the spammer's lists. Most common is to read out and analyze the source code of a single webpage. The spam robots look especially for the "mailto:" link and the "@" sign. That's why we encoded these parts and also the dots within any mail address shown at LEORO. This way spam robots can't recognize that part of the source code but your browser does and you're able to click mail links the way you're used to.

Does this really work? We think it does. We have our own mail address shown at the LEORO website for more than a year now and the amount of spam we get is still far below one percent of all mail we get to that mail account. (And this surely comes from "hijacked" mail programs - there's no way you could protect your mail address once someone else has it within his personal address book and then that user's computer got infected by mail worms and viruses.)
www.leoro.de - Ferienhaeuser und Ferienwohnungen weltweit
www.leoro.com - Holiday Homes and Apartments worldwide
Hells Bells
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Post by Hells Bells »

Leoro, I've just added my site, and I thought this was free, so why have I been emailed an invoice for €78,which I need to pay before my entry is activated?
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Post by LEORO »

Dear Helen and other forum members.

This discussion started with a copied invitation email from us, to advertise
for free on our website. We answered to alleviate any concerns people may have about this offer which,
was intended for the original recipient of the mail.
We went on to say : "If anyone would like to advertise, just send us an email."
But without an email and special owner login numbers from us, the advertising is not for free.
That's why we have a price list on our website.
Some people have been interested in advertising for free and they have as requested, sent us a
mail and received an owner number for their free object entry.
We'd like to say, that owners of holiday homes still can send us a mail until
the end of this week (Sunday 29th Oct) if they wish to advertise for free
for a 12 month period. After this time we will be ending the offer otherwise we would be overwhelmed.

Dear Helen, we will send you a private message about this. Please don't
worry, we only would activate an object entry after an invoice had been paid.

Hope this clears up any confusion or concerns.
www.leoro.de - Ferienhaeuser und Ferienwohnungen weltweit
www.leoro.com - Holiday Homes and Apartments worldwide
Hells Bells
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Post by Hells Bells »

Sorry, I had not read the thread correctly.
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vrooje
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Post by vrooje »

LEORO wrote:There are many different ways to get your mail address into the spammer's lists. Most common is to read out and analyze the source code of a single webpage. The spam robots look especially for the "mailto:" link and the "@" sign.
Agreed.
LEORO wrote:That's why we encoded these parts and also the dots within any mail address shown at LEORO. This way spam robots can't recognize that part of the source code but your browser does and you're able to click mail links the way you're used to.
Sorry, but I disagree here.

The following is a copy of code that I pulled from a random property listing on Leoro. I've changed the domain name so that the e-mail no longer works, but it's the same on all the spot-checks I did for different listings:

Code: Select all

<a href="mailto&#58;info@hiddendomain.de?subject=Villa%20Somewhere%20with%20pool,%20description%20-%20LEORO" class="object">info@hiddendomain.de</a>
The mailto link, and the text of the e-mail that shows on the page, are both displayed without any encoding whatsoever. This is true on the english site, the german site, and on your contact page.

Perhaps I have missed something, but there doesn't seem to be anything at all stopping a spammer from recognizing the e-mail address in the link code above.

I hope that I am wrong and that you have discovered a new way to fool even the "view source" function of a browser while still confusing spambots. But if I am correct, I find it disturbing that you are advertising your publishing of e-mail addresses as safe from spammers, when it in fact isn't.
Brooke
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vrooje
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Post by vrooje »

Just to update -- I have been in contact with Leoro support. It seems that I was wrong: the site does encode their e-mail addresses to prevent spam, but Firefox's "view source" function translated the encoding to normal mailto link (IE didn't).

Assuming it is as effective, this method would probably be preferable to a javascript method, because it will work even for people who have turned javascript off. To test its efficiency at preventing spam, I have suggested that I start a listing with a dummy e-mail address, and see how many spam inquiries I get.

Anyway, I just wanted to post this to correct my previous post. There is responsible coding going on at Leoro. :) I'm so glad to have been wrong!
Brooke
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