Hiding emailaddress from the HTML source code

H

Harry Bellafonte

Hi

I am creating a company website. On almost each page there is an
emailadres with the mailto: in the a href tag. My company want this
adres not to be visible through the html source code ( so that bots
cannot read the emailaddress from the source code from the internet).

What is the simplest way to do this? Do I have to create javascript
function that is triggered from the a href tag, and the javascript
function opens an email with the adres in it?

Regards
 
J

Jukka K. Korpela

Scripsit Harry Bellafonte:
I am creating a company website. On almost each page there is an
emailadres with the mailto: in the a href tag.

That's questionable. What will they do when the addresses change? It might
not be a problem if they have content management that lets them change an
address in one place only and have this reflected everywhere on the site,
via some authoring, preprocessing, or dynamic generation software.
My company want this
adres not to be visible through the html source code ( so that bots
cannot read the emailaddress from the source code from the internet).

That's clueless, but if that's what they want, they can remove their
addresses, just as they can remove their phone numbers from catalogues to
prevent prank calls, their postal addresses from everywhere to prevent junk
mail, etc.
What is the simplest way to do this?

Remove the web site. (You asked for the _simplest_ way, didn't you?)
Do I have to create javascript
function that is triggered from the a href tag, and the javascript
function opens an email with the adres in it?

And wait for spammers to use tools that interpret JavaScript?

Just tell them to make up their mind. Either use the Internet, or stay away
from it. In the former case, stay tuned to getting spam. Deal with it.
There's a lot of software to filter out spam. Just preventing some address
harvesting, at the cost of aggravating your customers and making your site
crappy, wouldn't stop them from getting spam.
 
H

Harry Bellafonte

Scripsit Harry Bellafonte:


That's questionable. What will they do when the addresses change? It might
not be a problem if they have content management that lets them change an
address in one place only and have this reflected everywhere on the site,
via some authoring, preprocessing, or dynamic generation software.


That's clueless, but if that's what they want, they can remove their
addresses, just as they can remove their phone numbers from catalogues to
prevent prank calls, their postal addresses from everywhere to prevent junk
mail, etc.


Remove the web site. (You asked for the _simplest_ way, didn't you?)


And wait for spammers to use tools that interpret JavaScript?

Just tell them to make up their mind. Either use the Internet, or stay away
from it. In the former case, stay tuned to getting spam. Deal with it.
There's a lot of software to filter out spam. Just preventing some address
harvesting, at the cost of aggravating your customers and making your site
crappy, wouldn't stop them from getting spam.

Hi Jukka

I understand your reaction. Each page has different email addresses on
it. This is what the company wants. I cannot tell them to remove the
addresses just because it is useless to prevent it from being used by
spammers. I need a good solution ( even if it is not 100% spamsafe)
not to show the email address in the source code but still visible via
the webpage.

Maybe that someone else can help me.

Regards
 
K

Knut Krueger

Harry Bellafonte schrieb:
ybe that someone else can help me.

I tried a lot of hint from the internet. Nothing of them with "click and
write" helped for a long time, except making a picture with the e-mail
address but that's not "click and write" - the user is not able to
click onto the e-mail address to write one.

Regards Knut
 
A

andrew

[...]
I understand your reaction. Each page has different email addresses on
it. This is what the company wants. I cannot tell them to remove the
addresses just because it is useless to prevent it from being used by
spammers. I need a good solution ( even if it is not 100% spamsafe)
not to show the email address in the source code but still visible via
the webpage.

I would not go so far as to describe it as a _good_ solution but some
have tried:

http://www.addressmunger.com/

There is an interesting discussion at:

http://nikitathespider.com/articles/IngenReklamTack.html

I have personally used numeric character references, it is ugly and
goes against many sound principles but appears to be an effective
barrier against _most_ spam.

Andrew
 
R

rf

Harry Bellafonte said:
Hi

I am creating a company website. On almost each page there is an
emailadres with the mailto: in the a href tag. My company want this
adres not to be visible through the html source code ( so that bots
cannot read the emailaddress from the source code from the internet).

What is the simplest way to do this?

Did you ever think to try googling? "obfuscate email address" will do.

Couple of million hits.
 
T

Toby A Inkster

J

Jonathan N. Little

Toby A Inkster wrote:

Wow! Where have you been hiding? I guess reports of your death were
greatly exaggerated...
 
U

Usenet

I am creating a company website. On almost each page there is an
What I've done is create a contact form, not give out an email address.
The contact form can be used to contact several different mailboxes via a
dropdown, but the dropdown doesn't have a full email address in it, just a name
(any kind of reference), which the form looks up in a database and then emails
to the corresponding address.

Hope it helps
Mark
 
B

Bone Ur

Well bust mah britches and call me cheeky, on Tue, 13 Nov 2007 09:49:30
GMT Jukka K. Korpela scribed:
Remove the web site. (You asked for the _simplest_ way, didn't you?)

Sure... _You_ can give an inane answer, but when _I_ say something like
"Verdana only comes in white," I'm an international despot! Oh, the
discriminatory iniquities of the Old Worlder!
And wait for spammers to use tools that interpret JavaScript?

Just tell them to make up their mind. Either use the Internet, or stay
away from it. In the former case, stay tuned to getting spam. Deal
with it. There's a lot of software to filter out spam. Just preventing
some address harvesting, at the cost of aggravating your customers and
making your site crappy, wouldn't stop them from getting spam.

Pragmatic but undiplomatic. Are you on the government tit?
 
B

Bone Ur

Well bust mah britches and call me cheeky, on Tue, 13 Nov 2007 17:21:34 GMT
Jonathan N. Little scribed:
Toby A Inkster wrote:

Wow! Where have you been hiding? I guess reports of your death were
greatly exaggerated...

Or perhaps confused with reports of his life...
 
D

dorayme

Harry Bellafonte said:
Hi

I am creating a company website. On almost each page there is an
emailadres with the mailto: in the a href tag. My company want this
adres not to be visible through the html source code ( so that bots
cannot read the emailaddress from the source code from the internet).

What is the simplest way to do this?

Try http://www.addressmunger.com/.
 
A

André Gillibert

andrew said:
I have personally used numeric character references, it is ugly and
goes against many sound principles but appears to be an effective
barrier against _most_ spam.

It is by far the least harmful perverse "anti-spam" measure, but it's also
one of the weakest.
Well, that's worth what it's worth.
 
A

André Gillibert

Usenet said:
What I've done is create a contact form, not give out an email address.
The contact form can be used to contact several different mailboxes via
a dropdown, but the dropdown doesn't have a full email address in it,
just a name (any kind of reference), which the form looks up in a
database and then emails to the corresponding address.

Good. This has many advantages over e-mail address.
This is more accessible than e-mail, because people who browse the web
don't necessarily have an SMTP client or a means to send e-mails. However
they need a browser which, most probably, supports forms.
Sometimes, the only internet access I get is a HTTP proxy without SMTP
server. In that case I can still use a webmail, but, not requiring people
to have a webmail is an accessibility feature.

(Giving both an e-mail address and an HTML form provides the best
accessibility).

Beware: HTML forms can be spammed.
 
J

Jukka K. Korpela

Scripsit André Gillibert:
Bad.

This has many advantages over e-mail address.

Partly, but also disadvantages, so using a form _instead of_ an email
address is foolish.
This is more accessible than e-mail,

Partly, but consider a user who needs his favorite e-mail program since it
has nice accessibility features, as opposite to the lousy implementation of
forms in web browsers. HTML forms are very primitive, and implementations
are even worse.
(Giving both an e-mail address and an HTML form provides the best
accessibility).

Not really. Giving them both _right_ provides the best accessibility. E-mail
is simple: just type the address. Making it a mailto: link is less relevant,
but probably a nice feature. Creating a form that avoids the basic flaws
seems to be almost impossible to mortals, given the fact that 99% of forms
on web pages have one or more _essential_ problem that could have easily
been avoided. Consider just too small textarea, presence of "reset" (=
Beware: HTML forms can be spammed.

Yes, of course.
 
J

Jukka K. Korpela

Scripsit Bone Ur:
Sure... _You_ can give an inane answer, but when _I_ say something
like "Verdana only comes in white," I'm an international despot!

No, you are just a person who makes himself or herself a fool in public.

There's a slight difference: my statement was factually correct, whereas
yours was grotesquely wrong.
 
B

Bone Ur

Well bust mah britches and call me cheeky, on Wed, 14 Nov 2007 00:19:33 GMT
Jukka K. Korpela scribed:
Scripsit Bone Ur:


No, you are just a person who makes himself or herself a fool in public.

Perhaps one of my moderately distant ancestors was a court jester. Perhaps
I like jestering, as opposed to gesturing, for the mere fun of it. That
doesn't make me a bad guy.
There's a slight difference: my statement was factually correct, whereas
yours was grotesquely wrong.

Oh, yes, _grotesquely_ wrong...

Anyway, let's end this here (instead of starting yet another interminable
argument such as the Web 1001 debacle above.) You have your perspective
and I have mine. The only comment I shall make is that I probably enjoy
mine more.
 
H

Helpful person

Hi

I am creating a company website. On almost each page there is an
emailadres with the mailto: in the a href tag. My company want this
adres not to be visible through the html source code ( so that bots
cannot read the emailaddress from the source code from the internet).

What is the simplest way to do this? Do I have to create javascript
function that is triggered from the a href tag, and the javascript
function opens an email with the adres in it?

Regards

This is very easy to do despite the many comments so far in this
thread. The best is probably using variables in javascript. People
in the javascript forum should be able to give you the information to
get this to work.

www.richardfisher.com
 
N

Norman Peelman

Harry said:
Hi

I am creating a company website. On almost each page there is an
emailadres with the mailto: in the a href tag. My company want this
adres not to be visible through the html source code ( so that bots
cannot read the emailaddress from the source code from the internet).

What is the simplest way to do this? Do I have to create javascript
function that is triggered from the a href tag, and the javascript
function opens an email with the adres in it?

Regards

I'd say use a FORM linked to a server-side script that can filter out
all non-essentials (read possible spam) like suggested in another reply.
Obfuscation methods can 'help' but are not the answer. Especially with
some browsers capability to display 'rendered' code as well as source.
This in conjunction with a CAPTCHA system as part of the form can reduce
spam even more - but some will still get through.

Do a google for:

email obfuscation
and
CAPTCHA

Norm
 

Ask a Question

Want to reply to this thread or ask your own question?

You'll need to choose a username for the site, which only take a couple of moments. After that, you can post your question and our members will help you out.

Ask a Question

Members online

No members online now.

Forum statistics

Threads
473,744
Messages
2,569,484
Members
44,903
Latest member
orderPeak8CBDGummies

Latest Threads

Top