hide email question...

Hi All,

At www.ugwa.org in the footer I'm using a js to hide the email so that it does not appear in the shtml file or when you reveal codes. I use similar scripts for other email addresses elsewhere on the site. They appear on screen and function properly to open your mail client and insert the destination address.

Of course spammers are devious and relentless and if you note the path in the footer of the shtml page and enter http://ugwa.org/format/hem_i.js, the script appears in full.

My question is, are there known spiders that can sniff out the path, look at the js (which I slightly altered from other examples but perhaps not unique) and piece together the email address or is this something that would require a human to actually go through this process? In short, is the address "effectively" hidden from spiders (though not from a determined human) or are spammers getting clever enough to harvest the email as described and do I therefore have a false sense of (relative) security?

tnx

mr johnson

It all depends on how the spider is setup. It can see that there is a javascript referenced in your page. Whether they decide to spider to the next level and look at them is up to their spider.

Hi All,

And thanks arnyinc for your reply.

Just when you thought it was safe...

I realised that I had a readable email address in a form at http://ugwa.org/carapace_subscribe.shtml. I've now replaced that with an include statement of the email address so if they spider the shtml file on the server it won't show the address but it does show in reveal codes when you request the page and the include statement is invoked. I also changed the address to an alias instead of using the one that's in the footer of every page

Is there a way to hide the address here as well? Or will a js within the form cause an error?

mr johnson

Here's my suggestion (http://www.codingforums.com/showpost.php?p=413147) for protecting email addresses from spammers. If you're very clever, you can write a filter to intercept any outgoing email addresses and replace them with the appropriate JavaScript code.

mr johnson, regarding the formmail script you are using. If you view the source on the page you linked to it shows the email address (subscribe@.......). If you could edit the actual .pl file and hard-code the email address into that script, you would be better off. Even if you don't know perl you could probably figure it out.