How are You Preventing Mailto-Link Harvesting?

mixwhit asks: "In our ever increasing effort against spam, we are now considering replacing all mailto: links on our website with something unharvestable (i.e. 'user (at) address', javascript mailto links, character entity evasion, etc.). Obviously this won't stop the spam, but it seems prudent to stop the harvesting so that the spam may slow down someday (year 2024 maybe?). What are others doing with this issue? We would prefer to preserve mailto link clickability, but also only want to make this adjustment once." One suggestion I would make is to put your email address in an image. People can read it, but harvesters won't be able to harvest it (unless they download the image for OCR), but any barrier you can place in front of the spammer, without blocking people honestly interested in communicating with you, is probably a good thing.

Comments

Re:Missing the point

[An Anonymous Hero]

Here is a webpage that will quickly convert your mailto link into a form that bots will miss.

You know, there is a concept here. "STOP SPAM FOREVER IN TWO EASY STEPS:

• enter your email adress HERE
• click OK!

This is the BEST, FOOLPROOF way to NOT GIVE YOUR ADDRESS AWAY!!"