Making email addresses safe from bots on a webpage?

email, obfuscation

Solution

I generally don't bother. I used to be on a mailing list that got several thousand spams every day. Our spam filter (spamassassin) let maybe 1 or 2 a day through. With filters this good, why make it difficult for legitimate people to contact you?

Problem

When placing email addresses on a webpage do you place them as text like this: ``` joe.somebody@company.com ``` or use a clever trick to try and fool the email address harvester bots? For example: HTML Escape Characters: ``` &#106;&#111;&#101;&#46;&#115;&#111;&#109;&#101;&#98;&#111;&#100;&#121;&#64;&#99;&#111;&#109;&#112;&#97;&#110;&#121;&#46;&#99;&#111;&#109; ``` Javascript Decrypter: ``` function XOR_Crypt(EmailAddress) { Result = new String(); for (var i = 0; i < EmailAddress.length; i++) { Result += String.fromCharCode(EmailAddress.charCodeAt(i) ^ 128); } document.write(Result); } XOR_Crypt("êïå®óïíåâïäùÀãïíðáîù®ãïí"); ``` Human Decode: ``` joe.somebodyNOSPAM@company.com joe.somebody AT company.com ``` What do you use or do you even bother?

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