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Tip: Code To Hide Email Address From Email Harvesters
Tired of all that junk email? One method of decreasing the potential for SPAM (unsolicited commercial email) is to prevent the email addresses posted on your site from being read by the email spiders that crawl the web in search of email addresses.
This can be done by creating a graphic image of your email address. Therefore, only by looking at your page is your email address visible. To email siphon spiders your email address is just another graphic. However, visitors to your site would have to manually type your email address to use it.
Another method is to add a small javascript to your page, which would display your email address as clickable link. This javascript constructs your email address by using the document write command by writing the component parts of your email address to the screen of your browser. Only at the time the page is viewed does the complete email address exist.
The following example and its code are shown below: To use this code just just cut and paste the code into your page and change the assigned variables ( user = "spiderman" and site = "somedomain.co.uk" ) to match the email address you wish to use.
Feed their spiders and poison their list...
Now that you have made capturing your email address a little more difficult it's time create some havoc for the spiders and get even with some of those annoying spammers. To do this create a webpage that is accessible from a hidden link on your home page. Next, gather a number of email addresses from the recent junk mail you have received. These should be ones that look like real email addresses, not the ones you know are fraudulent or that appear to be only temporary. Fill this page with some of the words and phrases so that it resembles the structure of sentences and paragraphs with these email addresses sprinkled into the text. Do not create a visible link to this page, since it isn't intended to be viewed by visitors to your site, but designed to provide a tempting meal for any wandering spiders. What you have created is poisoned spider bait page.
Here is how it works… When an email siphon spider visits your website it can't locate your real email address since it is hidden through one of the above techniques. However it will follow the links on your page and will eventually find your hidden link to your baited page. The spider will grab all of the email addresses of those who spammed you and return to its lair. If all goes well these names will get added to a SPAM list and sold to other spammers. Spammers spamming spammers.
If you think you see the justice in this spider bait plot, you are probably missing the best part. Not only will spammers be potentially be spamming others spammers but you have devaluated their list. But here comes the best part. If the spammers are sophisticated they may detect what you are up to and stop gathering email addresses from your site.
If enough website operators created enough poisoned spider bait pages all the associated cost of spamming would incrementally increase. If this was coupled to the refusal to open or act upon any unsolicited email the reason for spamming would be rendered invalid.
An added incentive for creating this page is that it may also appear appetizing to search engine spiders because of the keywords within the paragraphs of this page. For this reason you should put a visible link back to your home page. However do not use any meta tags or keywords to intentionally attract search engine spiders. Because search engine spiders do not like too rich of a diet. If you know of anyone who is annoyed by undesirable email please refer them to this page. The quicker we can stop this type of Internet abuse the better for everyone, especially those who are serious and consider their time on the Net valuable.
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