concealing email addresses on websites

[mrcharly-YHT]

I'm looking for suggestions as to the simplest way of 'hiding' email addresses so that web-bots don't read them (i.e., not using a 'mailto:' link).

[MSeries]

Inserted an image with the email address on

http://www.mseries.plus.com/email.html

before that I encoded it in unicode but after a while the bots got wise to it.

[Ian H]

Try this.

[MSeries]

Of the two offer so  far I think mine is 'the simplest' and the OP doesn't want to use a mailto: link

[Pete]

If all else fails, you could try this approach, which will beat even OCR:


Note: I scrawled this in clumsily, using the mouse in MSPaint, it's not my normal handwriting, so any graphologists p*** off! 

[bobb]

The image one is the simplest and that's what the OP wants.

I personally use email forms that are posted to a C# page that will then send the email to you from the server. And bots can't get at code running on the server.

That certainly isn't the simplest way! Plus it has the draw back that if they enter their email address incorrectly, you won't be able to get back to them.

Of course you'd validate the email address they enter first, but that won't guarantee it.... You can't help it if people are too stupid to enter their own email address correctly...

[mrcharly-YHT]

Thanks for the suggestions.

I'm going use javascript+semi-unicode; breaking the unicode string up into two parts to confuse bots.

Like this 

('<a href="&#109;&#97;&#105;&#108;&#116;&#111;&#58;fred.' + 'bloggs&#64;yahoo.com')

I'll use an image for the actual link, so that people can read the email addresses.

[rogerzilla]

I use JavaScript to put the address together on the fly.

      <script>
document.write('<a href="mailto:name');
document.write('@domain.co.uk">E-mail</a>');
      </script>

How effective it is, it's hard to tell; once clients have your e-mail address in their address book, viruses and trojans can use it as they like.