Support Topics: Spam:
Tools & Tips: Tools for reducing spam
There are two ways to allow visitor's
to your website know where to send you email and minimize
your exposure to email spiders (applications that search
web pages for email addresses). Spidering web pages for email addresses is one
of the most common ways a spammer will get your email address.
The best way to
hide your email address from an email spider is not to
have it on your site at all. We highly recommend using
a web based contact form on your site - such as one using Perl scripts
(but not our Easyscript Form to Email -see below). These
scripts hide your email in a script that the spiders never
see, so visitors can contact you, but spiders do not see
your email address.
The second way is
obscuring your email address so it
is hidden, or
encoded in a special way as to make
it hard for spiders to read it, but
yet it displays correctly in the web
browser. This way does not work as
well as using a web based contact form
but it will reduce the amount of
spam you
will
get. The encoding works like this:
On your web page
you want this:
"For
more information, send email to yourname@domain.com."
In the source
code for the web page, you would
have this:
"For more
information, send email to <A
HREF="mailto:
yourname
@domain.
com">
yourname
@domain.
com
</A>"
It looks wacky, but
your web browser understands
it - it works as if you had simply
put "yourname@domain.com" in
your HTML code, but to most email spiders
it will look like garbage and they
won't add it to their email address
list.
The below form will
encode your e-mail address, transforming
your email address into its equivalent Character
Entities. Simply enter your
regular e-mail address in the first
text box, click the encode button,
and then highlight and copy the
resulting code produced in the
second text box. This encoded e-mail
address can be read and translated
back into its original ascii text by
almost any web browser without any
further action on your part. Just replace
all instances of your e-mail address
in your HTML code with the code
generated by the form. If you are using
our "Easyscript
Form to Email" use the encoder
to replace any email addresses listed
in your form ("mailto" for example).
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