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How to hide you email from Spam Spiders
Using Javascript


From NetBITS#015/22-Jan-98
Copyright 1998 TidBITS Electronic Publishing. All rights reserved.
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JavaScript Yourself Anonymous -- In response to letters on hiding your email address on a Web page to avoid spammers sucking it down, Joseph McLean <[email protected]> wrote us with a nifty JavaScript-based solution, which he offers for free:

Brandon Munday mentioned how he removed all "clickable" mailto links from his Web site to thwart the evil address-collecting spiders. Making a site non-clickable is so counter to the Web's nature that I became convinced there had to be another way. And there is - if you turn to JavaScript for aid.

JavaScript is not ubiquitous technology, but this can also work in your favor, because spiders don't speak that language - and most of your human visitors have browsers that do. Here's an example I cooked up in five minutes.

<script language=javascript>
<!--
// SpamProof Mail Script 1.0 by Joseph McLean <[email protected]> - freeware
// Linktext is the text you want folks to see and click upon.
// email1 & email2 are the text on either side of your email address's @ sign.
 
var linktext = "Email Me!";
var email1 = "jsmith";
var email2 = "where-ever.com";
 
document.write("<a href=" + "mail" + "to:" + email1 + "@" + email2 + ">" + linktext + "</a>")
//-->
</script>

This chunk of code can be pasted into your Web page's HTML at any point. Some old browsers don't support JavaScript, but they won't hit an error - the mail link will simply be invisible (as it is to spiders).


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Created: 07/30/98
Updated: 11/09/02


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