6 replies to this topic

[jon_itmagic]

When I set-up a new site for a client, I sometimes suggest they avoid publishing their e-mail address to help avoid it being picked-out by an e-mail harvester. Instead I'll set-up a feedback form to suit the client's requirements.

However, on occasions there are times when I have to publish e-mail addresses and as a result the spam follows.

In the past I always coded my MAILTO: links to fool the e-mail harvesters, but I've never tested the idea to see if it works.

Here's an example:

Instead of inserting an e-mail address in the standard way...

<a href="mailto:name@domain.tld">name@domain.tld</a>

I'll code the links this way... (I've had to insert it an an image)



Am I wasting my time doing this?... How 'clever' are todays e-mail harvesters these days and can they see past this sort of thing?

[SearchRank]

The only effective way I have found to keep email harvesters from picking up addresses is simply not to publish them at all and if you do publish them, make them non-linking images instead of html text. I have even seen where people make the "@" symbol and image instead of html text.

In mail forms, I hide the email address the form goes to in a Perl script.

I basically make sure there is no <a href="mailto:name@domain">name@domain</a> anywhere in the code. It has worked pretty well.

[qwerty]

I wonder if there's any data out there on what percentage of users don't bother sending an email if they have to go to the "trouble" of typing the address because an email link wasn't available to them.

I admit it -- I put up with spam just because I don't want to miss out on just one email from a sufficiently lazy user

[SearchRank]

I know for myself, I always feel more comfortable sending email to a company through a form because then I can put whatever reply to address in there that I want rather than clicking on a email link and having it open my email client to send them mail. If I am emailing a company that I feel will add me to any type of mail list, I always use an address that I can later throw away once I start receiving spam at it.

I stopped putting clickable email addresses on my sites about a year ago and still get plenty of inquiries through the forms, probably more than I did before. Besides if you make them fill out a form and require certain info, you can help them better because you usually have better information.

I enjoy not getting 1000 plus emails everyday to sift through. I still get maybe 2-3 spams a days but that sure beats 1000 plus.

[csjavi]

Check the threads here and here for previous discussions on hiding emails.

[Randy]

I use forms and php for all of my own sites. That way I can hide the email addresses in the php file.

I did have a client who insisted on a mailto: to open the user's email software awhile back who was concerned about spam. We played a little trick with that one.

First, I set up the email address in an image so that the harvesters couldn't get to it. It linked over to a little php page. This page first did a check against the HTTP_USER_AGENT and did a quick exit if it detected one of the harvesters. If not, normal visitors processed a single line like:

header("Location: mailto:emailaddress@domain.com");

Which opened their email client and inserted the email address. Seems like I had to set a little javascript function to send the back to the previous page too. Or maybe I threw it into a small popup window that closed itself. Been too long to remember all of the details, especially when it was more of a pain than it was worth.

That's the only way I've ever figured out how protect a normal mailto: decently well though.

[projectphp]

HTML endocing works fine. Email harvesters are simpe creatures. It just isn't worth the effort to make them parse JavaScript, parse code or anything else, as there are just so many easy to find addresses. Since I swapped to encoded mailto: 's I don't get much spam at all.