Re: hiding email addresses from bots

At 02:54 PM 10/2/00 , Janet L. Cady wrote:
>Anyone know an easy way to hide e-mail addresses from bots that basically 
>glean
>this info from html pages?  Yep, I know about using forms, but even then, a
>recipient carries an email address on it which could be picked up by a smart
>bot.
>
>Thanks,
>Janet Cady

Not necessarily easy, but the best way I've found. I *CAN* tell you that 
encoding email address cuts down on the spam in my email box (and my 
customers email boxes). This encodes the email address so that the email 
harvesting spam bots don't pick it up on the web sites. For browsers it 
works fine, just like a regular mail-to link and forms processing works 
fine for me and my accounts. But can't be picked up by the bots.

And yes, they DO pick up from forms, and I encode the mailto portion of the 
form as well. Actually, I have a print out of the ascii coding, and I 
create/write my own encoded mailto information for the client. But, the 
mailto encoder (link below) is a quick way to get it done.

http://www.emailaddresses.com/mailto_encoder.htm

If you want to see an example, look at the page at:
http://autumnweb.com/Roxys/contactRoxy.html

and then look at the source code, you'll see the below for the "mail to" 
link, and also similar in the form coding (at least I hope this works, and 
the &#number; info comes through in your email program!):
<xmp>
mailto:&#69;&#109;&#97;&#105;&#108;&#52;&#82;&#111;&#120;&#121;&#64;&#97;&#1 
17;&#116;&#117;&#109;&#110;&#119;&#101;&#98;&#46;&#99;&#111;&#109;"
</xmp>

What I like about Dreamweaver is that for each account, I figure up the 
encoded email addresses. Copy and paste that in via Notepad or Homesite 
editor. AND Dreamweaver leaves that coding alone. It doesn't "convert it" 
to regular letters. Some of my other editors did convert the ascii to 
regular text, and then every time I'd edit the page, at the end, I'd have 
to copy/paste that info in again. PITA.

Hope that helps,
Roxanne Flanagan
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Autumn Web ~ http://autumnweb.com/
Not just putting your business on the Web,
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