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PREVENTING EMAIL ADDRESS HARVESTING FROM WEBPAGE BY SPAMBOT
Spammers will use "harvesters" or SPAMBOT to collect email addresses from mailto: tags on web pages.
If you have a personal web page containing your email address, you may use the following method to lessen the impact of your email address ending up in spammers' list. This method will not prevent anyone from manually getting it from your web page but it prevent automated methods using software which spammers will more likely use.
On your webpage, instead of using a tag like:
<mailto:username@domain.com>
use
<mailto:username@domain.com>
The spammer's harvesting software will not see c as the letter "c", but any web browser will. This way, you maintain the functionality of the mailto tag, while making your email address unintelligible to spammers. Using this means of masking your email address has the added benefit of fooling viruses like Magistr and Sircam that can glean email addresses from mailto tags.
If you are using Microsoft's FrontPage, you will need to make this change by hand. FrontPage will "helpfully" convert c to the letter "c" whenever you open up an HTML document using AscII codes to represent letters.
You can also choose the alphabet to change based on the following list. In fact, it is recommended to mask even the "mailto:" characters.
|
Char |
Capital |
Small |
Char |
Capital |
Small |
|
A |
A |
a |
U |
U |
u |
|
B |
B |
b |
V |
V |
v |
|
C |
C |
c |
W |
W |
w |
|
D |
D |
d |
X |
X |
x |
|
E |
E |
e |
Y |
Y |
y |
|
F |
F |
f |
Z |
Z |
z |
|
G |
G |
g |
1 |
1 |
|
|
H |
H |
h |
2 |
2 |
|
|
I |
I |
i |
3 |
3 |
|
|
J |
J |
j |
4 |
4 |
|
|
K |
K |
k |
5 |
5 |
|
|
L |
L |
l |
6 |
6 |
|
|
M |
M |
m |
7 |
7 |
|
|
N |
N |
n |
8 |
8 |
|
|
O |
O |
o |
9 |
9 |
|
|
P |
P |
p |
0 |
: |
|
|
Q |
Q |
q |
- |
- |
|
|
R |
R |
r |
_ |
_ |
|
|
S |
S |
s |
. |
. |
|
|
T |
T |
t |
@ |
@ |
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** Update **
The newer spambots software can now even translate all the ASCII encoding and thus it is recommended to encode the mailto: tag and all of the email address after it.
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