Site Layout and Usability

email address harvesting - prevention?

Please support our Site Layout and Usability advertiser: PostgreSQL or MySQL? Compare and contrast the two most popular open source databases

•

Join Date: Jul 2004

Posts: 3

Reputation: cajun is an unknown quantity at this point

Solved Threads: 0

cajun

Offline

Newbie Poster

email address harvesting - prevention?

Jul 14th, 2006

Hi all
What is the safest way to put an email on a website without it being added to every spam list known to man. I am copying all the info from our old website to our new one (created with joomla) and want to find the best way.

All suggestions appreciated

•

Join Date: May 2005

Posts: 232

Reputation: Dogtree is an unknown quantity at this point

Solved Threads: 3

Dogtree

Offline

Posting Whiz in Training

Re: email address harvesting - prevention?

Jul 14th, 2006

The only way I can think of would be to munge the address. The problem with that is people can't click on it anymore and be able to mailto. A spam crawler can just as easily check your source as it can your page contents, so any email addresses would need to be specifically represented so only a human being with half a brain can transform them into something legit. dogtree@dogtreestudios.com would become dogtreeYOUKNOWWHATTOADDdogtreestudiosDOTNESScom.

•

Join Date: Jun 2004

Posts: 434

Reputation: FC Jamison is on a distinguished road

Solved Threads: 20

FC Jamison FC Jamison is offline

Offline

Posting Pro in Training

Re: email address harvesting - prevention?

Aug 12th, 2006

I know this is an old thread, but I thought it was worth resurrecting for a solution.

The following script will disguise the e-mail link
[html]
<a href="mailto:name@server">name@server</a>
[/html]

as

[html]
<script type="text/javascript">emLink("eman, revres");</script>
[/html]

You simply reverse the order of the letters (name = eman, server = revres).

Help with Code Tags

(Toggle Plain Text)

function stringReverse(textString) {
  if (!textString) return '';
  var revString = '';
  for (i = textString.length-1; i>=0; i--)
    revString+=textString.charAt(i)
  return revString;
}

function emLink(name, server) {
  var rname    = stringReverse(name);
  var rserver  = stringReverse(server);
  var email    = rname + "@" + rserver;
  var mailText = '<a href="mailto:' + email + '">' + email + '</a>';
	
  document.write(mailText);	
}

I hope that helps someone.