Best Method Of Hiding Email Adresses

Muel

Muel

Muel

Soldato
Joined
26 Jun 2009
Posts
3,023
Location
Sheffield
Just wondering which method of hiding your email address you guys think is best on a website?

I'm using ampersands at the moment, but apparantly a lot of newer spiders read them and recognise email addresses anyway.

A mate of mine said just use a form, but to be honest I'm not keen on forms, they seem a bit too formal and less personal.

Just wondering if anyone could recommend something? Obviously I could just use a picture, but that really annoys me, I'd much rather just have a link you can click.

I was thinking maybe mix up ampersands, those other percentage ones and normal letters?
 
Y'know, we did this about a year ago, spent God knows how many days coming up with all sorts of things.

PHP ImageMagic or whatever it's called email pictures
contact AT companyname.com
contact [@] companyname.com
.Net form, JavaScript that changed a | into a @ when it was clicked, all sorts

And no matter what we did we always got out emails harvested.

In the end, rather than waste any more resources, we just applied a bit of common sense, applied a good SPAM filter to our Exchange Server, then Outlook and all the unwanted emails have reduced significantly.

To be honest if you're going down this route then fair play to you, if you devise something that's gonna fool the spiders for a while, then you warrant a pat on the back, but I honestly think that:

a) If your company is so high profile you get loads of SPAM, then adopt proper SPAM capturing methods
and
b) If your company isn't getting that many anyway, then why waste time doing this. Go out and earn money.
 
Agree with J on this.

To be honest, your not going to beat a spider harvesting email addresses.
Unfortunately the guys that write these programs are normally good at what they do, and pride themselves and boast on having better code than the guys that write anti-spider software.
As a rule, it only takes a week that a new prevention software/code comes out, that it gets picked apart and the bots quickly updated.


Last time I did any research in to this the only answer we come up with was using a flash button with an email link, but its been a while, not sure if they have been able to work around this yet
 
Last edited:
I would listen to your mate, its the most secure form. That way you are never displaying the email address in the first place.
 
Yeah, I would use a form as well. You cannot beat the spiders, and on top of that, to me, email addresses on a business website just seem cheap and unprofessional. Like they can't be assed to give me a quick and convenient way of contacting them.
 
Cheers for the advice guys. On my own site I'm not bothered about getting spam really, I've just set a fowarder for the minute which fowards to my Gmail, which gets about 150 spam messages a day.

I was more bothered about when I make peoples sites for them? If they don't fancy a form that is, having spoken to a few people they seem to agree with me, they feel they're a bit too formal and it feels like you're emailing the business and not an individual person.
 
Its their choice what they want to do, they are your customers, present them with both views and see what they decide. Then do that. In the end if they don't like that, they may come back for you for a change and thus more business. Give them both sides, ask them which they want. Shouldn't be your headache.
 
Here are some ways I can see to prevent spam, ranging from severe to relaxed

-Don't show the email address
-Make the email address harder to read (defeats the point lol)
-Only allow contact via a contact form (no email address shown to public)
-Show the email address in an image
-Put emails as normal and setup spam filters

Obviously it really depends if you actually want to get any emails, spammers will always find a way so its best to be prepared. My pref if contact form + spam filters.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom