Code. Want to hide your email address?

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    This is probably not new, but - please let me know if this is flawed...

    If you are trying to hide your email address from spambots, why not just use tinyurl.com? It seems to work http://tinyurl.com/nhlck
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    don't tinyurl's expire?

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    If thats the case could you not make your own tiny urls with a php script, or even do a redirect using the .htaccess file?

    Oh hold on this answers the expiry question - "we will create a tiny URL that will not break in email postings and never expires."
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    One small issue with that approach is that it takes the user to a blank tinyurl 'page', leaving users staring at a blank page once they return from using their email client. This behaviour isn't typical and could possibly lead to confusion.

    It's interesting, but I'm not entirely convinced that the small downsides are worth it.

    As Ryan kinda suggested, would it not be possible to sort something like this using your own urls to a page which denies entry to bots. The 'tinyurl' itself actually seems irrelevant - which is to say that I don't see what using a tinyurl offers over handling the process yourself via the htaccess either as a redirect, using mod_rewrite or whatnot.
    At least if you handled it yourself you could build something into it which returns users to an actual page on your site, rather than leaving them with that blank page.

    I'd also feel a little uneasy about presenting a cryptic url destination to users who like to check the statusbar for destinations. Handling it yourself provides the opportunity to use a more descriptive and therefore, more assuring, href than tinyurl typically provides.
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    anyone use Hivelogics email script
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    I'd also feel a little uneasy about presenting a cryptic url destination to users who like to check the statusbar for destinations. Handling it yourself provides the opportunity to use a more descriptive and therefore, more assuring, href than tinyurl typically provides.


    You could probably have a fake email such as info@mydomain.com which redirects to me@mydomain.com at least that way it doesn't look so odd and would be treated properly by all bots but obviously there would be no info@mydomain.com so the spam goesnowhere. In fact you could probably bounce that email back to the spammers, could you?

    I tried an .htaccess redirect but it wouldn't work, maybe someone with more knowledge can say if its possible to handle email addresses with .htaccess redirects.

    "anyone use Hivelogics email script"


    It looks like the link to the script is broken, also if its just an encoder I'm sure spambots can decode these.
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    I used to use the hivelogik js email on my NPA site, but I found it too difficult to 'read' in terms of applying via something other than document.write. I ditched it for another js method which I could easily integrate into a W3C DOM-based approach.

    I too am naturally a little cautious about the effectiveness of js-based obfuscation, but for whatever the reason, my main site email address has remained spam free.

    I would have assumed that the smarter harvesters would be able to handle js by now, but it would seem that those which can, if any, are thin on the ground, making js an effective approach against at least a large number of harvesters.

    ...all anecdotal, of course.
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    Thanks for the input. [I never noticed the other page; doh!]

    The idea of the tinyurl was that it doesn't 'look' like an email address... mind you would the 'spiders' eventually get to the URL?

    If I knew code I'd write something like this... but I'm not. Anyone fancy doing it for 'good will' ?

    Oh, just like this: http://www.phpfaber.com/i/products/tinylink/

    Will try it and report back - might ask a mate to write a 'auto back if mailto' redirect type thing and a link to a spam bot redirector
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    Just installed that TinyLink product, and it works quite well. I guess you could use that if you're hard-coding an email address to a page, but it'd be cool if there was a way of dynamically creating the TinyLink without having to submit the form etc... Probably a piece of piss for a half-decent coder?

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    You mean to tie it into a directory of users, for example?
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    FWIW -- it's becoming apparent to me from experience that spam bots now have javascript enabled (as much as they need to anyway) so if it troubles you, I wouldn't rely on any javascript based method to hide your email from spambots.

    Ditto for unicode obfuscation.

    Pain in the arse.

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    Fwiw™…

    JavaScript “Protection:” Don't Fall for it! (June, 2006)

    Seems that email link protection has finally gone the way of 'image protection' - in that all the misguided schemes that are often employed to (try to) achieve that can more or less be boiled down to one simply rule - if you don't want it taken by twats/bots, don't publish it on t'interweb.


    +

    http://linux.oldcrank.com/tips/antibot/

    Only scanned it, but it looks as though it could potentially be useful reading.
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    You mean to tie it into a directory of users, for example?


    Kinda, but more that if you fill in a comment in a blog, or enter an email address in an article in a CMS, that upon submission of the form, it does the translation to a TinyLink and stores that in the DB.

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