Sunday, June 22, 2008

Obsfucating email

One of the annoying things about some jobs is that random people need to be able to email you, meaning that your email needs to be out on the web — No, not me, but you'll note I have my email address on the sidebar anyway.

This almost automatically generates a lot of spam, as harvester programs search your HTML source and look for the mailto: links.

There are ways to hide email addresses from programs, as a look at the source code for this page will show. Depending on how secure you want to try to be, I've found three levels code that might help reduce spam to your email address. Of course, it doesn't protect you from spam generated because a virus or spyware code got your email from someone's address book, but it should help keep the spam down a bit. Note that all require Javascript:

Note that I've not labeled any of these best, and I don't claim they will work against every possible harvester, but it should help. You'll probably also be better off starting with a brand-new email address. And, of course, making sure that everyone who puts your email in his address book uses Linux.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Who knows where to download XRumer 5.0 Palladium?
Help, please. All recommend this program to effectively advertise on the Internet, this is the best program!

rcjhawk said...

You know, if you can't post in appropriate places, and you can't use Google, my telling you anything ain't gonna help ...