Posting your email adress online

[Dry Lips]

I wonder what you guys think is the best way to share your contact information
(first and foremost email) on your website/blog in order to prevent spam-bots
from obtaining your address...

Is the customary name [at] example [dot] com effective? What about including
your address in an image?

[inobe]

email is simply useless to me, i only use email to register for sites, i could care less what happens to the account!

if someone cannot speak to me over a phone, or personally, it's their loss, not mines.

[IWantFroyo]

I have a personal email address people actually talk to me with, I have one for signing up for websites, and I have one that I give away publicly.
I check the publicly available one periodically.

[lisati]

I have several email addresses. Which one I give out usually depends on who I'm talking to and what we're likely to be discussing.

[Dry Lips]

Well, I also have several email addresses. But still I'd want to keep spam at
a minimum though. I know it is possible to use scripts that encrypts your
email address, but for a wordpress blog that isn't a possible option.

[azmyth]

You can always just use gimp to add your email address to a png or jpeg and then place this on your site. I've also used web sites that will generate javascript code that will allow you to place a link on your site with your addy. Bots don't harvest javascript so you'll be safe.

[CharlesA]

I wonder what you guys think is the best way to share your contact information
(first and foremost email) on your website/blog in order to prevent spam-bots
from obtaining your address...

Is the customary name [at] example [dot] com effective? What about including
your address in an image?

I use a contact form on my website. Thought about posting my email address in an obfuscated way, but decided against it.

[polardude1983]

I use a form for people to contact me. If I ever have an email address on my website I use javascript to keep them at bay.

[critin]

Is the customary name [at] example [dot] com effective?

This must be quite effective as I see it used most often. Bots (so far) can't read [at]. You can also add spaces and alert your visitors to delete them.

[Paqman]

Is the customary name [at] example [dot] com effective?


I doubt it, it's a well-known tactic. I'm sure at least some of the bots can parse this successfully.



What about including your address in an image?

That's what I do, it's probably the easiest way. I just hard-code it, take a screenshot and then crop that image and change the hard-coded link to the image. That way you get all the colours and formatting bang on.

I know there are some tools that will use javascript to generate the address. To a bot that scrapes the page it just looks like an unintelligible block of js, but browsers will naturally go to the effort of executing it. I doubt any bots do this, as it'd be very inefficient of them to run all the js they bumped into just in case.

[crazy bird]

if someone cannot speak to me over a phone, or personally, it's their loss, not mines.

No, it's your loss. If it is something very important for you where people want to inform you about and they cannot reach you, what do they loose?? Nothing. You loose!


My opnion about sharing email addresses on a website or blog: Doing this is asking for spam. It's an invitation for spammers to fill up your mailbox. As long you don't use your private email ofcource ;)

Best is to create a second account at Gmail or Hotmail or Yahoo or whatever and use that on websites and blogs. I have an account at Gmail which i only use on websites. Thank god their spam filter works good, don't get much spam.

[inobe]

No, it's your loss. If it is something very important for you where people want to inform you about and they cannot reach you, what do they loose?? Nothing. You loose!


like a walmart gift card, or a free laptop :lol:

so you think, hate to disappoint you crazy bird, they call me, in fact, when they can't get me over the phone, they come to the office ;)

[HermanAB]

You can just as well publish your email address for all to see and get on every spam list, since you will eventually be on them all anyway, then handle the resultant deluge with a proper spam filter.

My address has been in use for about 20 years and if I turn my junk filters and RBLs off, then I get about 10,000 mails per hour, which is due to the server speed, it cannot handle more than that. The faster you make your mail server, the more spam you get.

[marin123]

http://marin.bareta.hr/kontakt.html

I have this online for almost 2 years now and i don't get spam (maybe couple of emails a week).
Just make a php script and thats it. If you want, I can paste you the code here...

[t0p]

like a walmart gift card, or a free laptop :lol:

so you think, hate to disappoint you crazy bird, they call me, in fact, when they can't get me over the phone, they come to the office ;)

Tell ya something, inobe, the world where folk can /will get you on the phone or drop by the office s rapidly disappearing (if it's still here at all). Ever since the internet was "invented", email has been the number 1 thing going on over it, and that has been increasing (exponentially?) ever since. Most people (if tech allows) email. Fact.

I have business relationships, and even a few personal relationships, in which email is the most often used medium of communication. Telephones, yeah, but they are increasingly relegated to pizza-ordering devices. I have a smartphone, and I rarely call someone with it. Text messages and emails ftw!

As for face-to-face, I have business and/or personal relationships with people who live a loooong way from me. Email and text are the only smart ways to communicate. (Snail mail? Oh come on, this ain't the 19th (or even 20th) century no more.

Incidentally, I got a xmas email from a company I do business with... and it was cc'd to over 100 other customers. All those email addresses, in plaintext. Should I shrug or eek?

[Bachstelze]

I run my own mail server with SpamAssassin, which is good enough for me (i.e. the amount of spam that goes through it is acceptable to me) so I never obfuscate my address in any way.

[stalkingwolf]

an experience i had a couple years ago. I was looking into changing auto insurance. I set up an email address just for that. I contacted 4 insurance companies.

In 24 hours that email account had over 100 emails in it none of them from the companies i had contacted. Everything from body enhancements to your new power wheel chair. But nothing about auto insurance.

[Dry Lips]

Thanks everyone! I've gotten lots of useful advice in this thread. Here's
a KDE-Christmas star for everyone: :KS



That's what I do, it's probably the easiest way. I just hard-code it, take a screenshot and then crop that image and change the hard-coded link to the image. That way you get all the colours and formatting bang on.

That's a smart way of doing it!


http://marin.bareta.hr/kontakt.html
I have this online for almost 2 years now and i don't get spam (maybe couple of emails a week).
Just make a php script and thats it. If you want, I can paste you the code here...

Sure! It would definitively be of benefit to this community!


I run my own mail server with SpamAssassin, which is good enough for me (i.e. the amount of spam that goes through it is acceptable to me) so I never obfuscate my address in any way.
That's very tempting since I'll be setting up a server that'll be permanently online anyway.
But I guess the security will have to be tight...

[urukrama]

You implied you are using Wordpress. If that is the case, you can use one of the many contact plugins (http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/search.php?q=contact).

[forrestcupp]

I use a contact form on my website.

This is definitely the way to go. It looks professional, and it protects you from spam. If you happen to have a Wordpress blog, there are tons of great "Contact Us" plugins. If you have a different blog, check around and see what you can find.

[lisati]

This is definitely the way to go. It looks professional, and it protects you from spam. If you happen to have a Wordpress blog, there are tons of great "Contact Us" plugins. If you have a different blog, check around and see what you can find.

The thing about contact forms, however, is that you need to be careful about script injection. If you roll your own, there are steps you can take to minimize this risk. A quick search for "script injection contact form" will bring up a variety of ideas.

[CharlesA]

This is definitely the way to go. It looks professional, and it protects you from spam. If you happen to have a Wordpress blog, there are tons of great "Contact Us" plugins. If you have a different blog, check around and see what you can find.
Aye.

The contact form I use was from http://green-beast.com/gbcf-v3/

It needs a bit of modding on a couple parts, since a few commands are depreciated, but it's nothing major.


The thing about contact forms, however, is that you need to be careful about script injection. If you roll your own, there are steps you can take to minimize this risk, e.g. http://www.thesitewizard.com/php/protect-script-from-email-injection.shtml

That's why I decided to use one that was already made. Did some research and the one at green beast seemed to be the best one out there.

[forrestcupp]

The thing about contact forms, however, is that you need to be careful about script injection. If you roll your own, there are steps you can take to minimize this risk. A quick search for "script injection contact form" will bring up a variety of ideas.

If someone wants to mess you over, they'll find a way. I guess a person can maliciously inject a script, but I don't think bots can do that, can they?

[CharlesA]

If someone wants to mess you over, they'll find a way. I guess a person can maliciously inject a script, but I don't think bots can do that, can they?
They could be written to try to, probably.

[MG&TL]

:lol:

Until I read this thread, I thought the

myname [AT] xyz [DOT] com

was because some websites couldn't handle @ characters.

Personally I don't have a problem with spam, even though my email is all over the place. On the other hand, I haven't been "active" that long, maybe I have a tsunami of spam coming my way.

[Dry Lips]

I found another alternative... You can just make a Gravatar profile. The email address is stored in an encrypted form and won't be visible to spam-bots. The reason why I asked is that I've got a little wordpress blog that I use instead of a twitter/facebook account. However it is hosted by wordpress themselves, so I can't actually install plugins and stuff. However, once I get my main homepage up and running, all these other scripts and plugins would be handy.

Again: thanks a lot to everyone for many very good suggestions. Those nasty spam-bots are clearly no match to my friends at Ubuntuforums!

Popcorn for everyone::popcorn:

[Old_Grey_Wolf]

I have had a website for 10 years that doesn't get spammed. I use a JavaScript for the email address:
<!--
var username = "my_user_name";
var hostname = "my_email_provider_domain_name";
var linktext = "Click here to send me email";
document.write("<a href=" + "mail" + "to:" + username +
"@" + hostname + ">" + linktext + "</a>")
//-->

I hope this is helpful.

[guyver_dio]

simply making your email address an image won't work, you still have to wrap it in a link tag (e.g. <a href="mailto:email@domain.com">....). Using the javascript method would probably be the best way to go about it (the above method probably wouldn't work either, that's just javascript writing html to the page, I'd have it set up so it runs a javascript method when the email image or whatever is clicked). It'll just look like jibberish to a bot as there's many ways a person can do it by javascript, so bots probably won't be designed to detect it.

The [at] and [dot] method is as old as email itself, I know for a fact that I could create something that could detect emails like that, so I see no problems for the any bots out there detecting it.

[forrestcupp]

I have had a website for 10 years that doesn't get spammed. I use a JavaScript for the email address:
<!--
var username = "my_user_name";
var hostname = "my_email_provider_domain_name";
var linktext = "Click here to send me email";
document.write("<a href=" + "mail" + "to:" + username +
"@" + hostname + ">" + linktext + "</a>")
//-->

I hope this is helpful.

Great idea! I've done mailto hrefs plenty of times, and I never even thought to do it like that.

[Old_Grey_Wolf]

Great idea! I've done mailto hrefs plenty of times, and I never even thought to do it like that.

The spam bots can't adjust to the many ways you can code that. You can choose all sorts of variable names. I could have written it as
<!--
var no = "my_user_name";
var spam = "my_email_provider_domain_name";
var allowed = "Click Here To Send Me Email";
document.write("<a href=mailto:" + no +
"@" + spam + ">" + allowed + "</a>")
//-->

To make life easier, should I change email addresses, I saved the code in a file called email.js. Then I added this to my hundreds of HTML pages where I wanted my email link to appear.

<center><script language="JavaScript" src="email.js"></script></center>

:lolflag:

[CharlesA]

Use style sheets not center tags!

Also PHP is awesome for adding something like a footer (with email address or contact info)

[Old_Grey_Wolf]

Use style sheets not center tags!

Also PHP is awesome for adding something like a footer (with email address or contact info)

10 years ago when I decided to make the website, I wrote a Perl script to convert a GEDCOM file (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GEDCOM) into webpages. Most of the 400 or so webpages on my site were generated that way. I keep telling myself to rewrite the Perl script for CSS or PHP; however, I have never gotten around to doing it. :)

[Paqman]

I keep telling myself to rewrite the Perl script for CSS or PHP; however, I have never gotten around to doing it. :)

It'd probably be worth doing. Once you've switched to CSS it significantly reduces the amount of work it takes to maintain a site.

[Old_Grey_Wolf]

It'd probably be worth doing. Once you've switched to CSS it significantly reduces the amount of work it takes to maintain a site.

I agree; however, I think this is starting to get off topic. :)