Showing email address on blog

Ashish Derhgawen

Hey guys, I was wondering..what could be the safest way to let people email me from my blog? I'm really scared of spam mail..any ideas? Ashish :)

Time flies like an arrow; Fruit flies like a banana. Ashish Derhgawen - http://ashishrd.blogspot.com[^]

amclint

Add an image verification script, that seems to work pretty good against bot spammers.

if (!interested){return false;} amclint

Todd Smith

-Encode the address so a bot will not find it "myemail at somewhere dot com" -Use a clickable image and compose the email link dynamically

Todd Smith

Jon Sagara

* Put up a contact form. However, even that is no guarantee against spam because they could just as easily spam the form, but at least they won't have your email address. * Write a little JavaScript function to obfuscate your email address. * Create an image that contains your email address. I don't think there is a foolproof way to do it, but as far as keeping your email address private and out of spammers' grubby little hands, the contact form is probably the best way to go.

Jon Sagara When I grow up, I'm changing my name to Joe Kickass! My Blog | My Site | My Articles

amclint

I thought he was talking about bots spamming his comments form or something.

if (!interested){return false;} amclint

Charlie Williams

That'll stop spam being posted to the message boards. I think he's looking to avoid the email spam that goes along with posting an email address in plain text.

if(!curlies){ return; }

James R Twine

Todd Smith wrote:

-Encode the address so a bot will not find it "myemail at somewhere dot com"

People have been using that kind of thing for so many years now that I would be suprised if bots are not already looking for that kind of format and decoding it. It is trivial to parse out formats like:

me-at-someplace-dot-com
me(@)someplace.com
me(AT)someplace(DOT)com
etc.

Todd Smith wrote:

-Use a clickable image and compose the email link dynamically

A better idea - just be sure that the "dynamic" part is followed - the server should accept the input and return the mailto: link, not simply having the image's URL target be the mailto: link - remember that bots generally scan the raw HTML, but do not render it. [Edit: Then again, a bot will generally follow links so that it can crawl a site, so it could still recognize the retuned link if it was smart enough... Ah, dammit - there I go again giving the bot-writers good ideas... :doh: :omg:] Generally, I have found that if someone wants to email me bad enough, I can simply give them an image with my email address on it and they will type it in by hand. Peace! -- modified at 14:07 Thursday 11th January, 2007

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Mike_V

Hiveware Enkoder[^]? Seems pretty cool. Encodes arbitrary HTML in javascript... pretty cool. Cons: requires javascript to be enabled (duh) Pros: can create a clickable email link that is hidden from all but the most sophisticated spam collectors (ie. none) Mike

Ed Poore

That looks really cool :beer:. Might use that on one of the websites I manage, was just thinking about how to protect email addresses today.

I have no idea what I just said. But my intentions were sincere.

Ashish Derhgawen

That's a good idea..

Time flies like an arrow; Fruit flies like a banana. Ashish Derhgawen - http://ashishrd.blogspot.com[^]

Rocky Moore

I agree with Jon Sagara on having a contact form where your email address is not expored. Another option is to use an email address that you do not use anywhere else and tell every (where you display the email address) to prefix the subject line with a keyword of your choice (add someting like "Asmish Blog:" to the subject line, just to not include that in a clickable link. After that you just filter (using your email program of choice) all incoming mail with the prefix to a folder and then delete everything else. Focus on detecting good mail instead of worrying about spam.

Rocky <>< Latest Code Blog Post: SQL Server Express Warnings & Tips Latest Tech Blog Post: Microsoft doing it again!

Ashish Derhgawen

Yes..I always thought that the spam bots must smart enough to decode things like me-at-someplace.com Good idea..:)

Time flies like an arrow; Fruit flies like a banana. Ashish Derhgawen - http://ashishrd.blogspot.com[^]

Chris Losinger

i use this:

...some luverly HTMLio...


<!-- 
var name = "my\_name";
var domain = "my\_domain.com"; 
var linktext = "email";
var subject = "email subject";
document.write('< a href=\\"mailto:' + name + '@' + domain + '?subject=' + subject + '\\">');
document.write(linktext + '< /a>'); 
//--> 

...some more luverly HTMLio...

(remove spaces at the start and close of the HREF tag) -- modified at 13:59 Thursday 11th January, 2007

image processing toolkits | batch image processing | blogging

Ashish Derhgawen

Sounds like a good idea to me. I don't think the bots will ever be able to guess the actual email address this way. Ashish

Time flies like an arrow; Fruit flies like a banana. Ashish Derhgawen - http://ashishrd.blogspot.com[^]

Dan Neely

James R. Twine wrote:

Generally, I have found that if someone wants to email me bad enough, I can simply give them an image with my email address on it and they will type it in by hand.

The other, and IMO less irritating method to the user is to require the user put SomeWord in the subject header and have the mail servers spam filters reject all emails with out that in the subject. Click the link, copy/paste into the subject.

-- Rules of thumb should not be taken for the whole hand.

Ashish Derhgawen

Okay..I'm trying your technique on a test mail address. If the results are good..I'll use my default email address. :D Ashish

Time flies like an arrow; Fruit flies like a banana. Ashish Derhgawen - http://ashishrd.blogspot.com[^]

David Crow

I've used this approach before. As far as I could tell, it was never exploited.

"Approved Workmen Are Not Ashamed" - 2 Timothy 2:15

"Judge not by the eye but by the heart." - Native American Proverb

Ashish Derhgawen

I just hope spam bot makers are not watching this conversation :~ Ashish

Time flies like an arrow; Fruit flies like a banana. Ashish Derhgawen - http://ashishrd.blogspot.com[^]

Chris Losinger

well, i got the JS off the net, somewhere myself. you can certainly do some tweaking to the script itself, to disguise it from any bots looking for that particular script...

image processing toolkits | batch image processing | blogging

Rocky Moore

Wouldn't a bot using a screen scraper (which has the ability to run javascript) still get the same results?

Rocky <>< Latest Code Blog Post: SQL Server Express Warnings & Tips Latest Tech Blog Post: Microsoft doing it again!