Unspamable E-mail Link
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As I go to Web hosting forum to Web hosting forum I have noticed a lot of people lately have been asking how you can create an “unspamable” E-mail link. They all want something that the E-mail harvesters out there can not pick up on. Well there are several methods out there, but I want to share with you one of my new favorites.
First, here is a little more information about the javascript that is used.
Ever wonder how spammers find and email you all that “junk” They do so by using robots that retrieve your email address from your webpages, and add it to their spammer’s list. Here’s a script to prevent spammers and email harvesters from finding your email address on your website. The below email address link is unretrievable by spammer robots. Simply update the variables with your email information and relace your mailto: links with this script.
You can cut and paste it onto your own Web site via this link. Have any other good suggestions to keep your links from being picked up by those horrible spam folks?
[tags]email, javascript, spam, protection, tools, code[/tags]
7 Comments
RyanB
January 26th, 2007
at 9:20pm
*sigh* This came out about a year ago.
Robert W Gilcrease
January 27th, 2007
at 4:36am
I have a widgit on my Mac, that uses email cloaker by http://www.emailcloaker.com/
Elaine Pack
January 27th, 2007
at 6:34am
While the script is a very good idea, I’d take it one step further by changing this line slightly:
var domain = “cdrsoft.com”;
My personal website host gives me unlimited email accounts, so I get all kinds of junk addressed to “anything” @mydomain.net. A spambot that can eyeball the underlying code thus could still find me by grabbing the value (as shown) in domain, so I’d modify it even more by creating two vars to have the domain name and the suffix separated, and reconnected in the code further down. Still not perfect, but one more bit to help.
FYI, I’m a local government webmaster, and a colleague in another locality recently reported that they used a script like yours, and “eventually” the spammers figgered it out, durn it. Guess there’s really not a true unspammable method :( I personally have started using xinbox.com for email links on my personal site. It’s a bit cumbersome but it does help to some degree.
Cheers!
Elaine in Charlottesville, VA
Tim Hodkinson
January 27th, 2007
at 9:08am
I’ve displayed a contact email address on my website in the form of a jpeg image for over a year now and not received any spam. I haven’t gotten much email, but it’s not a high traffic site. And there’s not much reason to contact me either…
Jason Fisch
January 29th, 2007
at 7:28pm
Unfortunately just another Java Script anti-spam set-up. The ultimate solution will be one that includes no Java Script. Since Java Script can be disabled or if a user is using a screen reader, he will not be able to use the link. For now, the only solution that somewhat works is using the unicode @ and . to slow down spammers. Many do not go through the hassle of looking for it, when so many sites just use the @ and .
We really need to find a solution that will allow full access to the HTML mailto: code. Something without Java Script, some type of encoding…
Jason Fisch
Blog - JFischWeb.com
Mike
January 30th, 2007
at 5:34am
The trouble with this, is that no link is completely un-spammable. If this scheme works well, and everyonw starts to use it, then it will quickly be broken by the spammers. The best bet is to write your own variation on this script, so that it will never be worth the effort to break.
Dri-Anna
January 30th, 2007
at 5:35pm
Mitch:
I use the free version of Auto Responder.com. Have never had a problem of any kind. I love it!
You might want to check it out?