[thelist] Preventing spam spiders from reading mailto links.

[Liam Delahunty]

I've a number of techniques and online forms for generating the code here:
http://www.liamdelahunty.com/tips/email_obfuscation_for_spambots/

I've got the following types:

0. Replaces the at @ sign with @ in the link text and tag. It appears
as a readable link in the browser

1. JavaScript to add the two sections name + @ + domain.

2. Bin2hex

3. Ascii encode

4. Hex & Ascii encode

I tend to use the ASCII encode on sites. None of my addresses on pages above
have been harvested by spam bots.

<tip type="Spambots" author="Liam Delahunty">
On your web site consider using a unique email address such as web_contact@,
just for contacts via the web site so you can filter off messages once/if it
gets harvested by spambots.
</tip>

Kind regards,
Liam Delahunty,
Mega Products Limited

-----Original Message-----
From: thelist-bounces at lists.evolt.org
[mailto:thelist-bounces at lists.evolt.org]On Behalf Of Philip Weller
Sent: 07 December 2003 05:14
To: thelist at lists.evolt.org
Subject: [thelist] Preventing spam spiders from reading mailto links.


Hello, all.

Recently, while admiring the HTML on a site I was visiting (as Web geeks
often do) I noticed that they were hiding their e-mail address from spam
bots by rendering it in escaped character entities.  I've since implemented
this technique in my just launched personal site (www.philipweller.com).

I was wondering if those of you much more experienced than myself might have
some real-world feedback as to the effectiveness of this technique.  Are
there any techniques you use and can recommend?  (I'm aware of Daniel
Benjamin's Hiveware Enkoder (http://hiveware.com/enkoder_form.php) and think
he's providing a wonderful service, but I've chosen not to use it because it
relies on JavaScript and won't work for users who've disabled it.)

Many Thanks,
Philip Weller

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