[thelist] Hiding email address from spambots

[Casey Crookston]

As we know, anytime an email address is displayed on a website, espically
inside an <a href="mailto:"> tag, it will eventually get harvested by a
spambot.  I've found a couple of tricks to keep this from happening, and I'm
wondering what the group thinks of these.  It's only a matter of time before
the spiders are modified to read these methods as well, but perhaps one of
these is a good short-term solution?

Before someone says it, yes yes, I know that the best way to do it is with
an html form and a server side script.

1) use CSS:
http://www.phoenity.com/newtedge/hide_email_spambots/

HTML codes:
<p id="email">Lim Chee Aun</p>

CSS codes:
#email:after{
/* \40 is a character entity for the '@' symbol */
content: " <cheeaun\40phoenity.com>";
}


2) Use Javascript:
http://blazonry.com/javascript/js_hiding.php

<SCRIPT LANGUAGE="JavaScript">
<!--

var lhs = "web";
var rhs = "blazonry.com";

function print_mail_to_link()
{
   document.write("<A HREF=\"mailto");
   document.write(":" + lhs + "@");
   document.write(rhs + "\">" + lhs + "@" + rhs + "<\/a>");
}

//-->
</SCRIPT>

3) Use Unicoding:
http://www.website101.com/spam_file/spambot_unicode.html

For example, the following email address:

webmaster at internet-tips.net

will be shown in Unicode as:


&#119;&#101;&#098;&#109;&#097;&#115;&#116;&#101;&#114;
&#064;&#105;&#110;&#116;&#101;&#114;&#110;&#101;&#116;
&#045;&#116;&#105;&#112;&#115;&#046;&#110;&#101;&#116;