Counter spam when using "mailto:"

• • Reply

  14 years ago

  by arry2002uk

  Aaron

  Ashford, United Kingdom

  Joined 14 years ago
  Many site designers  use the mailto: link in their webpages, but this can often result in an ever growing amount of spam entering your mailbox.
  
  I am sure you know that spammers achieve their levels of annoyence by building a database of email addresses and them bombing these recipients with junk advertisements but what some people do not know is that 40% of these addresses are obtained through your very own source code!  Basically spammers use software technology not unlike "crawlers" to "harvest" email addresses from mailto links such as the example below:
  
  Eg: <a href="mailto:[email protected]?subject=applesnails&amp;body=Enter text here">[email protected]</a>
  
  Well there is a way to still use the mailto command and to confuse spammer "harvesting" programs. The technique in question is done by using character entities to encode portions of your email address!
  
  Eg: <a href="mailto:&#106;o&#104;[email protected]
  Which ultimately translates to the user as mailto:[email protected] but as a jumbled mess for the "harvester" software.
  
  I am not sure if there is a demand for me to explain this concept further, whether it has already been posted or whether anyone else already knows
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
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• • Reply

  14 years ago

  by paulfp

  Paul Freeman-Powell

  Liverpool, United Kingdom

  Joined 19 years ago

  Yeah that's an interesting method but I fear that spammers will simply write programs to look for that being done, and then convert the codes back to the proper characters.

  I just always avoid publishing the address, and instead have a form on the page. Plus a CAPTCHA too, 'cos they're cool

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• • Reply

  14 years ago

  by webdevelopa

  webdevelopa

  , United Kingdom

  Joined 14 years ago
  I have an answer to that question and it happens to be a similar method to the one in the other post I have.
  
  Most spam as you said is collected by bloody spambots that look into pages for the @ sign inside the source code.
  
  Now check this page : http://www.geogreen.gr/welcome.html
  
  If you do "view page source" you get my obfuscated code. Therefore NO SPAM.
  
  Neat ah?
  
  
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• • Reply

  13 years ago

  by johnstag

  Alastair G Johnston

  , Switzerland

  Joined 13 years ago

  I think the technique is understood and used

  The attached link makes it very easy to encode your email addresses

  http://www.wbwip.com/wbw/emailencoder.html

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