[thelist] Using JavaScript for non-clickable email addresses

[Matt Warden]

Sarah,

On Mon, 31 Jan 2005 11:52:38 -0400, Sarah Sweeney
<mr.sanders at designshift.com> wrote:
> >>Would bots be able to harvest the email address
> >>anyway?
> >
> > Sure could.
> 
> So is this a technique that people have used in the past and email
> harvesters have learned to work around? Or it is something they *might*
> learn to work around in the future?

I highly doubt any harvesters can handle this method currently. No
programmer would bother with it, because no one is using it.

The flip side of that is: as soon as you use it, they'll add support for it.

Not to mention that you are assuming that the client supports the
mailto: peudo-protocol. My FF on linux does not. I'm sure I could set
it up if I cared, but I don't. I get a nice "mailto: is not a
supported protocol" dialog and decide it's not worth emailing
(assuming the email address is not available there in text).

Trying to keep addresses from being harvested is a losing battle, in
my book. It's better to devise systems to easily identify spam as it
comes in (like, for instance, the method gmail uses).

-- 
Matt Warden
Miami University
Oxford, OH, USA
http://mattwarden.com


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