Publishing your e-mail address and avoiding SPAM

[Deimos]

If anybody wants/needs to publish an e-mail address on their web site but is worried that the SPAMmers will get hold of their e-mail address (which they almost certainly will if you use e.g. mailto:me@bogus.com), there is an alternative method that provides a clickable link but one that cannot be (easily) read/harvested by automated processes (i.e. the automated processes as used by the SPAMmers).

http://www.caspam.org/ (or http://www.caspam.org/index2.html for more advanced more flexible options) provides web based page that you enter your e-mail address into and it generates the JAVA script you need to cut and paste into your web page to provide the clickable link. The link can be based on wither text (e.g. “contact me”) or an image.

It’s a free thing and I have nothing to do with the site, etc. (just thought it might be of interest to people as its something I found. Not used it myself but found it and thought it might be of interest to others.

(Sorry you will have to cut and paste the www links above as I am unable to enter them as “hotlinks”).

Ian

[Clair]

[quote user="Deimos"]If anybody wants/needs to publish

an e-mail address on their web site but is worried that the SPAMmers

will get hold of their e-mail address (which they almost certainly will

if you use e.g. mailto:me@bogus.com), there is an alternative method

that provides a clickable link but one that cannot be (easily)

read/harvested by automated processes (i.e. the automated processes as

used by the SPAMmers).

http://www.caspam.org/ (or http://www.caspam.org/index2.html

for more advanced more flexible options) provides web based page that

you enter your e-mail address into and it generates the JAVA script you

need to cut and paste into your web page to provide the clickable link.

The link can be based on wither text (e.g. “contact me”) or an image.

It’s a free thing and I have nothing to do with the site, etc. (just

thought it might be of interest to people as its something I found. Not

used it myself but found it and thought it might be of interest to

others.

(Sorry you will have to cut and paste the www links above as I am

unable to enter them as “hotlinks”).

Ian[/quote]

Thank you so much for this Ian.

I've been looking into this for a few weeks now and was a little bit confused by what I'd read.

You've reassured me it's not for techies only!

PS: I've made your links live in the quote above...

[Opalienne]

Isn;t there an easier way - to give your address as xxxpersonxxx@wanado,fr, for example and just put 'renove Xs  to reply' next to it?

[Deimos]

[quote user="Opalienne"]Isn;t there an easier way - to give your address as xxxpersonxxx@wanado,fr, for example and just put 'renove Xs to reply' next to it?[/quote]

You can. However, for harvesters its pretty easy to recognise things like “me [at] bogus.com” and other combinations. Its not particularly convenient for people to cut and paste the address and then edit it into its true form (plus one character left or deleted incorrectly and it bounces or goes to the wrong place), etc. Also, for companies doing the “remove the X’s from the address” is pretty amateur – particularly where there is a dead easy solution that works without issues (see first post).

Ian

[Richard-R]

I use this free service on my new site. Works very well. Zero spam.

http://xinbox.com

Far better than usinfg javascript.