Posted by dorayme on 06/08/05 03:00

> From: Oli Filth <catch@olifilth.co.uk>

> Jim Scott said the following on 07/06/2005 18:15:
>> Is there a way to have a button or other link to email me from the website
>> without the webcrawlers harvesting me for spam?
>> Currently I use a .jpg to display my email address, but of course it does
>> not serve as a direct link.
>
> Is your website driven by PHP or ASP or whatever? If so, the answer is
> yes. Have a "Submit e-mail" form. The script that collects it can then
> process it and e-mail it directly to you, so you'll never have to
> display the e-mail address to the outside world.
>
> Trying to obfuscate e-mail addresses (that can be clicked on as an <A
> href="mailto:..."> link) with Javascript, etc. is an exercise in
> futility. Eventually there'll be a spam-bot that is capable of
> deciphering whatever scheme you use, and then your address will be on
> their lists forever.


If I recall, Jim is not into ASP or PHP. Perhaps he should be?

There are sites to assist you to hide the email address from robots. As Oli
has implied, they will ultimately fail when the harvesters get smarter. A
sort of arms race. I have used
http://automaticlabs.com/products/enkoderform/ with some success judging by
lack of spam (but this could be for other reasons, it is no solid evidence).
Perhaps Oli's "futile" is a bit strong. That something is futile in the long
run does not mean it is in the short term - this is the logic of an arms
race. Perhaps it is better to use the latest of these encrypters than
nothing at all and be on the lookout for updates. Google up, keep updating
sites like the one I mention.

The other thing you can do is have an email address that needs some
modifying when the user hits the link. It comes up as
steve(pleaseRemoveTheBracketsAndContent)@telecom.uk or some such. For your
site which is not so stuffy or formal, this might be fine. I don't think
robots would get so smart as to see thru this. Though I suppose they could!

dorayme

[Back to original message]