Do you hide email addresses to "spam bots" on websites?

Question

Although there are still bots harvesting emails, I'm wondering if you hide email addresses on websites. I know this was common practice a few years back, but it seems that it's starting to fade.

Reasons not to:

most email servers include quality spam protection, including services such as Gmail and hardly any gets through
it's annoying to code as you have to remember and searching to change the email later can be tricky
no method will prevent any harvesting

Reasons to:

avoid getting on lists you don't want to be a part of
avoid some bots that are getting addresses for sending emails that can't be detected by spam (specific sales/marketing emails) or that technically aren't spam
the client or your servers don't have great spam detection

Do or don't you and what are your reasons?

http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1259363/does-e-mail-obfuscation-really-make-automatic-harvesting-harder — rahul, Aug 18 '09 at 07:32

score 2 · Accepted Answer · answered Aug 18 '09 at 07:30

I do occassionally, depends on the email address and what the client might be using. As you say, a GMAIL address is usually pretty robust at spam filtering. Often I'll obfuscate the address though, like using a utility like Jason's above or a technique as shown below...

http://techblog.tilllate.com/2008/07/20/ten-methods-to-obfuscate-e-mail-addresses-compared/

score 2 · Answer 2 · answered Aug 18 '09 at 07:34

2

You can hide your email address and display it using JS. This isn't also foolproof but offers some protection.

Something like this should do the trick:

<a class="mail">contact me</a>

// in JS
var parts = ['my', '.', 'email', '@', 'example', '.', 'com'];
var elems = document.getElementsByClassName('mail');
var len = elems.length;
for (var i = 0; i < len; i++) {
    elems[i].href = 'mailto:' + parts.join('');
}

answered Aug 18 '09 at 07:34

RaYell

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I was using the solution above in one of my projects. The idea behind it is that most spam bots doesn't handle JavaScript so for them this will only be an anchor. JavaScript however will turn this link into normal mailto href. Pretty simple and in my case the protection provided by that was sufficient. – RaYell Aug 18 '09 at 07:52
1

I have used this method as well – Robert Swisher Aug 18 '09 at 19:05

score 2 · Answer 3 · answered Aug 18 '09 at 07:37

2

In terms of an honest answer, I generally don't bother, because GMail's spam protection is so great. But I also don't really conduct business via e-mails.

answered Aug 18 '09 at 07:37

Noon Silk

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Markus Malkusch · Answer 4 · 2014-01-11T22:05:15.480

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IMO the most important points against hiding are:

it reduces usability,
and it annoys me (speaking as a user)

I publish my (non gmail) email address since more than 10 years as plain <a href="mailto:markus@malkusch.de"> into the web. There is no problem with UBE.

edited Jan 11 '14 at 22:05

answered Jan 11 '14 at 21:59

Markus Malkusch

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Gennady Vanin Геннадий Ванин · Answer 5 · 2011-01-26T02:44:18.733

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See http://hidemail.at converting your email address into a cool spam-prooved by a captcha service link you can share on the web, in Twitter, forums, Craigslist, anywhere

Here is an example of Email to be published as protected from bots link to try out:

http://hidemail.at/hu9drzpcfg for Email address faked@example.com

edited Jan 26 '11 at 02:44

answered Jan 25 '11 at 04:45

Gennady Vanin Геннадий Ванин

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Although I like the idea, for me it has 2 issues: (1) it requires opening another window/popup which either may not work or causes confusion for the user and (2) it adds to the resistance in sending you an email. – Darryl Hein Jan 25 '11 at 06:55

score 1 · Answer 6 · answered Nov 13 '11 at 23:57

1

Making your email an image is good, but what about when you make your emails on the fly? Then you need to be making images all the time.

I use eBB tool as an chrome addon. You might read more here: http://www.netbuilders.org/seo4experts-seo-tools/email-bot-blocker-avoid-getting-spammed-bots-27149.html

~Mike

answered Nov 13 '11 at 23:57

Mike

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In .Net you can generate the images on the fly using System.Drawing and the BitMap class. Just create a large bitmap and use graphics.DrawString to measure the length/height of the email in X font. Then use MeasureString to see how big it is. Make a new bitmap of that size and copy the image from the drawing graphics to the image and save it as a PNG. All on the fly, transparent even. – Ryan Mann Sep 23 '15 at 18:41

score 0 · Answer 7 · answered Aug 18 '09 at 07:27

Yes, SPAM bots still harvest emails. I saw some stat that said 90% of all email today is SPAM. Obfuscate your email: http://alicorna.com/obfuscator.html It isn't foolproof, but it makes it way harder for your email address to be harvested.

Also, you can make images like facebook does.

Do you hide email addresses to "spam bots" on websites?

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