Hiding your email address in plain site

Posted on August 23, 2006 by Dave J.

Posting email addresses on your website is dumb. Evil things called Spam-bots patrol the web looking for email addresses to add to their spam lists. For a corporate website, a web-form is a convenient way to hide from bots as well as manage incoming requests.

But for situations where direct contact with someone is preferred, please don’t post their email address on the website without hiding it from the bots. There are a number of ways to do this, but the best way is to use Javascript to assemble the email address for a browser. Spam-bots (and search-engine-bots) don’t use browsers or Javascript and thus just get some useless code.

A quick search turned up a number of tools to do this, but I used this one yesterday. You just take his email.js script and add it to your website, then use his tool to generate the script-call with the information to assemble the email address in the browser.

So I’ve added an email link to the right of this blog, instead of going to the ‘about’ page (where I assume Blogger has posted my email address with similar cloaking). Blogger won’t let me use the script within my posts, but you can look at the webpage to email me (if you can’t guess that my email is dave-at-b2blog anyway.)

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  • Chris Thompson

    I’m a little concerned about this technique from an accessibility point of view. A person using a screen reader would have no way to send you an email with this method.I’ve tried a bunch of different cloaking methods and I’ve finally just decided I’m better off spending my time finding a more effective spam filter than I am trying to block the bots.

  • Chris Thompson

    I’m a little concerned about this technique from an accessibility point of view. A person using a screen reader would have no way to send you an email with this method.I’ve tried a bunch of different cloaking methods and I’ve finally just decided I’m better off spending my time finding a more effective spam filter than I am trying to block the bots.

  • Anonymous

    It’s bad enough when your e-mail address is posted on the web, but when your phone number is posted, telemarketers have a ball.FYI – Dave, your phone number and address is posted on Alexa:http://www.alexa.com/data/details/main?url=www.b2blog.comAnd also at Component Database:http://www.medibix.com/company.jsp?company_id=10010787You can get rid of both if you ask those websites to do it.

  • Anonymous

    It’s bad enough when your e-mail address is posted on the web, but when your phone number is posted, telemarketers have a ball.FYI – Dave, your phone number and address is posted on Alexa:http://www.alexa.com/data/details/main?url=www.b2blog.comAnd also at Component Database:http://www.medibix.com/company.jsp?company_id=10010787You can get rid of both if you ask those websites to do it.

  • Dave J.

    Thanks for the comments. Chris, I didn’t think about accessibility. Isn’t it always the crooks that make life harder for us all?And to Anon, ditto what I said to Chris. Thanks for letting me know about those listings. I had seen it at Alexa before but didn’t realize I could control what they published.

  • Dave J.

    Thanks for the comments. Chris, I didn’t think about accessibility. Isn’t it always the crooks that make life harder for us all?And to Anon, ditto what I said to Chris. Thanks for letting me know about those listings. I had seen it at Alexa before but didn’t realize I could control what they published.

  • Anonymous

    Your welcome, Dave. I eliminated my phone number from Alexa myself, as a telemarketer told me he got it from Alexa’s Ranking section. However, it did take about 10 days to actually get it done, once I followed Alexa’s instructions on how to request it be done.

  • Anonymous

    Your welcome, Dave. I eliminated my phone number from Alexa myself, as a telemarketer told me he got it from Alexa’s Ranking section. However, it did take about 10 days to actually get it done, once I followed Alexa’s instructions on how to request it be done.

  • Amrit

    Sometimes JavaScript doesn’t work (<>it is disabled on many instances<>). Along with using the contact form, if there is no other option available, I use PHP to generate my email. I’ve made a program for myself that generates a string of ASCII numbers when I enter my email address, and I use those ASCII numbers to display my email.Amrit< HREF="http://www.website-content-writer.com" REL="nofollow">http://www.website-content-writer.com<>

  • Stuey

    Great tip there Dave. That JS is great. Many of my clients still want their email on the website but I usually add it as an image and put a feedback form (which isn’t ideal). This solves it completely……until the bots work out JS ;) Thanks again

  • Stuey

    Great tip there Dave. That JS is great. Many of my clients still want their email on the website but I usually add it as an image and put a feedback form (which isn’t ideal). This solves it completely……until the bots work out JS ;) Thanks again

  • Dave J.

    Stuey–You’re welcome. Will be watching your blog grow now!

  • Dave J.

    Stuey–You’re welcome. Will be watching your blog grow now!