Hide your e-mail address and reduce spam

spamthis-mailto@cridland.net
Having a mailto: link like this on your website means that robots will find your e-mail address really easily, and add it to all manner of lists without your permission. This is illegal under EU law, but - hey - what do the spammers care?

spamthis-textlink@cridland.net
Just writing your e-mail address out is less obvious - but even that won't hide it from the robots. After all, it still looks like an e-mail address in the code, so this probably won't work either.

spamt

his-hidden@cri

dland.net

This looks the same. It's not, though. Some browsers, like Microsoft Internet Explorer, won't even let you highlight this address at all. And if you view the source, you'll not see a website address at all - instead, you'll see this:

<table cellpadding=0 cellspacing=0>
<TR><TD>spamt</td><TD>his-hidden@cri</td><TD>dland.net</td>
</table>

Yep; it's a table. A simple but effective way of showing your e-mail address without attracting spammers.

Finally... try clicking this. This is simply a PHP page using the code below: it's within RFCs and appears to work just fine.

<?

header("Location: mailto:spamthis-code@cridland.net");

?>

Download this code

Also recommended
Project Honeypot is rather clever: it gives you special links and addresses so you can catch email harvesters at it - and hopefully prosecute them. Highly recommended.

Mail to the addresses on this page will be reported as spam to their ISPs and network owners. To contact me, see this.

These are my personal views and not those of the BBC | Full disclosure | FAQ | Contact me | More Cridland stuff at www.cridland.net