Hiding email addresses - what about the graphics?

[pmkpmk]

Hi,

in [webmasterworld.com...] there are quite a lot of means of hiding the email address from adress harvesters.

Some of these requiere the email-address to be rendered as a graphic, so that non-JS-users can see it too.

Rumour says, that smart email-harvesters are beginning to "read" graphic email adresses as well, applying basic principles of optical charcter recognition (OCR). However, adding a "garbled" or structured background and/or non-standard fonts makes it more difficult for the user to read these adresses too.

I'm wondering about color palettes. It is easy to construct a - say - 8 color image where I have 4 colors set to black (or very close shades of black) and 4 colors set to white (or very close shades of white), thus creating a very rich in contrast image for any human reader but a hopelessly garbled image for basic-OCR-harvesters?

What do you think?

[DrDoc]

Or, you can always do something like this:

name<span class="del">DELETE_THIS</span>@domain<span class="del">DELETE_THIS</span>.com

And, in your style sheet:

.del {
display: none;
}

[richlowe]

I find those graphics very, very annoying and I believe most users do as well. I believe the "right" thing to do is not include an email address at all. A form does the job nicely.

[DrDoc]

Hmm, I have to disagree about the form.

A form is not enough. I agree that graphics are annoying, but there are times when the presence of a visible e-mail address can make a difference between a sale and not.

If you do not have a visible postal address and e-mail address somewhere on your site, preferably fairly easy to find... how am I supposed to know that you are who you say you are? How do I know that you are company XYZ, and not "John Doe" trying to trick me? How do I know that the form I submit is actually going to reach "customer service", and not subscribe me to a porn mail newsletter?

[richlowe]

How do I know that the form I submit is actually going to reach "customer service", and not subscribe me to a porn mail newsletter?

And how does an email address address this concern?

[DrDoc]

I knew you would say that ;)

Technically it doesn't... But it gives many a false sense of security.

Filling out a form is also very impersonal. You don't have the option of saving the correspondence (unless you select the text, paste it into notepad, and save the file... which might not even be an option if you're on a shared/public computer). When you fill out a form, there's nothing telling you whether the e-mail actually reached someone or just bounced into oblivion.

All these things are solved if you offer a visible e-mail address on your page.

[richlowe]

Personally, as a customer, I prefer having a form as it is more structured. As long as the form is relatively free-form. One thing that I do hate with a passion is those forms which ask for too much information. Like I recently went to the walmart webside to complain, and they wanted my home address and tons of other information they didn't need. So they got two complaints instead.

[DrDoc]

I'm not saying "ditch the form". Forms can be great and serve their purpose. They just shouldn't be the only way for your users to get in touch with you.

[pmkpmk]

richlowe / DrDoc:

In my country, it is a mandatory, legal requirement to have a visible email address on the page (as well as the full company address, the international VAT number, the name of the owner or the chairman of the board and the registration number of your company).

I think I'll go for a split solution: I take the form for submissions to sales, marketing, jobs, support etc., and I'll go for the JavaScript+Graphics for the info@... and webmaster@....

[DrDoc]

...I still think you should use the style sheet solution. It works a lot better cross-browser.