How The Heck Do I...

Hide My Email Address (On My Website) from the Spam Bots?

Tips on Handling Email & Email Addresses

1. How do I protect an email address on my website from spam bots?

"Spam bots" crawl the Internet harvesting email addresses. The problem is... how do you provide your email address for people to contact you without having someone abuse it?

There are several methods.

A: Leave spaces in your email address.

This means that people will be able to see it, but it isn't 'clickable'. They actually have to type it into an email themselves. This is an 'okay' solution - but not the best one, because it involves more work for the person emailing you. e.g.

marg @ writing4success.com

B: Create a graphic (an image) of your email address.

This, too, enables people to see your email address - but it's more work for you. You need a graphics creation program to make it. Here is an image of my email address that I've created using SnagIt (I simply created a graphic in Microsoft FrontPage (you could do it in Word) then did a screen capture of it using SnagIt, and saved it as a .jpg image):

There is no email address in the source code for this, either... all the spam bots will find is this code:

<img border="0" src="tips-images/emailaddress.jpg" width="301" height="23"></p>

C: Use a code-generator to create code based on your email address.

I like this one, because it shows an email address that looks normal, but it hides the actual address from the spam bots.

You can either use your actual email address as the text that will be on show, or you can choose different text. I'm going to do both below, to show you how it looks and how it works. If you click on either of these links, a box will pop up from your email program, with the email address in place all ready for you to type your message:

 Click here to contact Marg

OR

To contact Marg, click here:
 marg@writing4success.com

BUT - in the background, in the source code for your web page, your email address does not appear. Instead, there is code that is too difficult for spam bots to bother with (why would they, when they can go on harvesting the email addresses that other less careful people have in place?)

Here's what the spam bots find in the background:

<a href="mailto:%6d%61%72%67%40%77%72%69%74%69%6e%
67%34%73%75%63%63%65%73%73%2e%63%6f%
6d">&#67;&#108;&#105;&#99;&#107;&#32;&#104;&#101;&#114;&#101;
&#32;&#116;&#111;&#32;&#99;&#111;&#110;&#116;&#97;&#99;&#116;&#32;
&#77;&#97;&#114;&#103;</a>

- not a hint of an email address to be seen!

To encrypt your email address using the third option above, go here:

http://www.mways.co.uk/prog/hidemail.php

Thanks to the gang at Mysterious Ways for this service.