Is it true that some spambots can read unicode?

Question

http://www.webthang.co.uk/tuts/tuts_html/spam/spam.asp

It says here:
"OK, this system is not 100% guaranteed to beat all the spambots, but as a first line of defence it's pretty effective."

Answer 1

Unicode is a standard... the author knows it, you know it, there are references all over the place showing how it works and how to encode your text. The people who write the spambots are just as likely to know and use it in their code as anyone else. I wouldn't expect this to be much of a defence at all.