How effective is email cloaking against harvest bots?

[Culveyhorses]

There were a few threads about hiding emails from harvester bots, so I thought I'd start a discussion concerning just how effective this is.

I am cloaking all emails on my sites now by converting both the mailto: portion and the html email address to ASCII characters. This is the technique most are using, whether via PHP or CGI.

But since it's relatively easy for the harvest-hackers to discover that we're doing this and add extra code to unconvert the ASCII back into a spammable email address, I would bet that this is only mildly effective now. And of course, over time, this technique will be totally ineffective.

Has everyone been able to eliminate or reduce harvesting this way? I can't really tell how effective our new technique is.

[ravenm]

take a look at
[rebel.com.au...]

Its an effective way I use to hide the e-mail address

few bots understand javascript

the most effective way is not to use mailto at all and use a form to collect the information. but a lot of surfers including me prefer the email method as it leaves a record in your email folder about what you have said to who

Chris