Forum Moderators: open
<P>hey buddy, mail
<SCRIPT>
m1 = "frank_rizzo";
m2 = "mysite";
m3 = ".com";
document.write('<a href=\"mailto:' + m1 + '@' + m2 + m3 + '\">');
document.write('frank rizzo<\/a>');
</SCRIPT>
but dont expect a reply
</P>
Because the script renders the mailto: on the fly, spambots never get to see the real email address.
This is also useful for preventing attacks from virus such as Sircam. Sircam looks at your cache files and scans the page for emails but won't find them. It they will find is mailto:' + m1 etc.
Another way to keep the spambots away is to uni-encode the email adress.
Before: mailto:frank_rizzo@mysite.com
After: mailto:frank
_rizzo@mysit
e.com
Provided the browser supports HTML 3.2, you should only see the clear text on your screen.
The unicode works regardles of whether JavaScript is enabled or not.
how do I unicode an email address?
thanks.
http://www.hivelogic.com/safeaddress.php [hivelogic.com]
Unicode table
@ @
. .
- -
A A
B B
C C
D D
E E
F F
G G
H H
I I
J J
K K
L L
M M
N N
O O
P P
Q Q
R R
S S
T T
U U
V V
W W
X X
Y Y
Z Z
a a
b b
c c
d d
e e
f f
g g
h h
i i
j j
k k
l l
m m
n n
o o
p p
q q
r r
s s
t t
u u
v v
w w
x x
y y
z z
Torben
can anyone name a spambot or help what to look for so that I could recognise in my stats?
How often have you folks been hit by these awfull animals?
As well older browsers do not support unicode, especially MAC OS 9 and earlier.
[unicode.org...]
Anyway here’s a list of some of the useragents to look for:
EmailCollector
WebEMailExtractor
EmailSiphon
ExtractorPro
You can use all tricks suggested above but if you come across a smart spam bot, which is able to parse JavaScript, Unicode etc. they are worthless. Also they usually ignore the robots.txt file.
Advanced spam bots identify them selves as a normal MS browser, which makes it harder to detect them. So the only way to detect a spam bot is by analysing the activity. Does the visitor act like a robot? Real user normally don’t visit 100 pages pr Second ;)
To prevent “attacks” from spam bots you really need advanced IP blocking/delivery. This is actually quite similar to detecting and maintaining a list of SE bots when dealing with cloaking. However, it takes a lot of time and effort to maintain such a list so I recommend that you subscribe spam bot list.
I’m sure that Brett has got a lot experience keeping spam bots out of WmW.
As for the GIF image route, this is simply an image that shows your email address. It isn't clickable, can't be scanned, simply requires a human to read it with eyeballs and use fingers to type the address into the To field of the mail program. Nothing automated at all, but inconvenient to lazy web surfers.
There is another way: have a link with a 'dummy address' (like root@localhost) in it, then use a piece of JavaScript to have an OnClick event that inserts the correct address when a user clicks it. When combined with the other techniques already mentioned above, it should be quite hard for a robot to crack.
it's easy to test too. just use a crawler where you can configure the User Agent and check it out.
I agree that the GIF image solution is very effective. However, the inconvenience of having to type in the email address manually may be an important usability issue.
I like your OnClick solution. Good thinking.
Torben
I've also seen people spell out their e-mail addresses, and actually write "joe dot smith at mydomain dot com".
If you can't get rid of spam, one tactic is to have one e-mail address that you use for sigining up to bulletin boards etc, and another e-mail address for putting up on websites. These two will attract spam, of course, the former more than the latter most probably. You only need to check the former when you actually need to retrieve confirmation e-mails etc. The other you need to check regularly.
You would then have another e-mail address you never publish anywhere for normal correspondance.
If you don't mind looking a bit cheap, you can set up a Hotmail account for a contact e-mail addy for websites. Hotmail has a very effective spam filter which successfully diverts most unwanted mail into a Junk Mail folder. Occasionally other mail gets in there too, but the web interface has a "This is not junk mail" button to deal with that. It's surprisingly effective.
Yet another technique is to write your address like this: joe.smithKILLSPAM@mydomain.com and ask people to remove everything in capital letters from the address before sending the mail.
