I have to put my e-mail on website (active link!)

How can I protect it from getting harvested?

[Makaveli2007]

I'm in Germany and we got crazy laws here (and on the internet it's even more ridiculous, because I need to first find out which laws apply to me, making an English-speaking website..).

One problem I have is that I need an active link of my e-mail address on the website for my website to be legal. How can I protect my e-mail from getting harvested and spammed to all day long? Are there any low-tech solutions to get this done(not a seasoned developer here and it's really just my first test site)?

thanks!

[skipfactor]

Will a recaptcha mailhide suffice?

[mailhide.recaptcha.net...]

[Rosalind]

There are several options, in that you can encode it in ISO, Hex, or Javascript. According to Project Honeypot this has been known to block around 85% of spam (it may be less effective as time goes on). Look that up and you should find an explanation of how those methods work. I've also found tools online that will convert your email into the relevant characters.

Seriously, though, that's some dumb lawmaking. Does German law really specify you need a mailto: link that isn't obfuscated in some way? Insane.

[jimbeetle]

recaptcha

Sounds nice, but call me the cynic when it comes to give somebody my email addy. Why the heck would Carnegie Mellon make this a private registration? As such it smells and I won't go near it. If it's mistake, it's a danged stupid one.

<added>Okay, after doing some quite around and about checking, recaptcha.net is in fact affiliated with CMU. Dropped Big Lou a line suggesting that private reg is not quite appropriate when asking for folks email addys.</added>

[tangor]

Might try

myname at someisp.domain

with a bit of text that instructs "remove spaces and replace "at" with @

Meanwhile, (suggestion) post the address complete and deal with the future spam, whatever comes through. Use your junk filters to get rid of the repeat offenders and go from there.

I've had my email address posted on the net since 1996. My filters, generated over the years, work very well.

[Makaveli2007]

thanks for the advice so far! I might have to ask about it again later (in this thread of course).

@Rosalind: The German law is a pile of...laws ;). I havent done enough research, yet, but I found a website of somebody who specializes in internet law (in germany) who has posted detailed information (and an FAQ) on this Impressum(=contact details) law..and in one of them he says that unfortunately posting an e-mail that is not active is not enough. I know it's insane....but I guess I'll see..lol

@tangor (or anyone else who wants to chip in):

You mean I should just post my address and eliminate repeat offenders by blocking their e-mail addresses individually? I assume I can't block their IP addresses, right? Would doing so possibly block quite a few people who I should not want to block (whicht hen would give me law problems again..)? or is that not a problem?

If I post my e-mail on my website (active link)...how much spam would I have to expect? 10 e-mails daily, or more like 100+ to sort through? what factors does it depend on (search engine rankings+number of links pointing to my site?)

[tangor]

The spam comes to YOU, not giggle. :)

Block any IP you can define, but why? Use the tools in your email program to FILTER JUNK. These guys are repeat offenders and after a short time you'll know who they are. Filtering on your EMAIL INBOUND SIDE is not covered by German law, or any freakin' law except the law of "what I want to see and thank you very much".

Made me look... Your territory does require an active/available email for contact (IF ADVERTISED). If your host site (or if doing it yourself via Apache or IIS) set up a contact email address and go from there. Further reading of the statute does not REQUIRE you to read your inbound mail (get a lawyer) so delete on a regular basis and ignore.

HOWWEVER, that filter specification suggested earlier works very well and SOME of the inbound mail might be of interest. Has been for me. A little work up front pares the spam down quickly and you get incoming from truly interested parties and that's the gravy.

[Makaveli2007]

"Made me look... Your territory does require an active/available email for contact (IF ADVERTISED)."

--> you mean you looked it up and found that out? If I understood it correctly..what is your source/your sources? I'm still doing research on it....

not so sure if filtering on my email inbound side isnt covered by the law, as it usually reads something like "there has to be a second, efficient way to contact (blablala)"...so if people can't c ontact me "efficiently", because I filter out a few e-mails from real people, I might be stepping into illegal territory....not a big danger, I guess, but Im paranoid ;)

[ethnicomm]

Your host might have a good spam filtering option as well.

Can you get away with showing a mailto address but adding that if the user contacts you via the contact form with CAPCHA, the response rate will be within hours or days (as an incentive to use the form instead).