Filed under: Utilities, E-mail
MailTo Encoder hides your email address from spambots
Spam is a problem nearly as old as email itself. Sure, it's 2009, but posting your email address on your website is still likely to invite spammers to let you know about the latest Viagra and Cialis deals. MailTo Encoder uses a bit of Javascript to obscure your address from spambots, while leaving it readable to actual humans.From the user's perspective, email links look exactly they way they normally would. The encoding and decoding all happen behind the scenes, thanks to some easy Javascript you can cut and paste. MailTo Encoder is a decent solution that gets the job done with minimal effect on the user experience, and it might beat setting up a contact form on your website.
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Saint Seminole said 3:42PM on 8-04-2009
For my (limited) purposes, I've simply created .png images with the email address printed there.
Of course, you can't copy and paste the email, but then neither can a spambot. You can read the address off the image and type it into an email's "to" box. It works so far, but probably wouldn't work with a huge site that requires hundreds of email addresses...
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PC-VIP said 4:33PM on 8-04-2009
No, not an image at all; a pretty clever Javascript implementation. Moderately more secore than an ASCII conversion, but . . . only moderately.
And good enough to do the job.
That said: I don't understand your comment about web sites w/ many email addys. That's why God invented copy and paste, you know?
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Ryan said 7:53PM on 8-04-2009
I use images as well on my site - but I add a mailto link to the picture which enters the @domainname.com part to the To: field - so that the user only has to insert the first part of the email address.
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thomas steinkuhl said 2:45PM on 8-10-2009
This would only work if the spambot is really stupid, and I would not count on that.
check out: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uePH8AgHNsM
It basicly shows, that you can grab any email in a browser window, regarless who clever you try to encode it in the source code.
A picture is the only solution... but as OCR is getting better...
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