Ever wondered why you get so much spam email?
One of the reasons could be that you have a mailto link on your website. Harverster programs have been around for a while now. They surf the Internet looking for such email links in order that they can send these unsolicited email ads – or even those wonderful emails telling you that a relative of a deposed African dictator has €1000 million secreted away and your help is needed etc.
Ok. I’ll now show you three ways which will reduce the likelyhood of this happening.
Several years ago, I read that these harvester programs ignore all code enclosed in <script> tags. So I came up with this little gem:
<script type=”text/javascript”>document.write(‘<a href=”mailto:’)</script>
me@mine.co.uk”>Email</a> link there
Basically, you replace your <a href=”mailto…… with this little script. The idea is that the harvesters cannot read the mailto portion of the script and therefore does not harvest the email address.
However, not long after, I read that new harvesters can now read code enclosed in <script>, but do not read anything included in the <head>. So I came up with this very simple alternative:
function message(){
location.href=’mailto:me@emailaddress.co.uk’;
}
This can be in either the <head> or a separate .js file. Call it with something like:
<a href=”javascript:” onclick=”message()”>Email link</a>
Not as messy as the first example!
Latest information I have read, is that the Harvesters can read this too. So I did a little bit of reasearch and found that replacing any of the letters in your email address with hexidecimal equivalents may do the job. Most harvesters look for the @ character in the email address, so I replace that with its hex equivalent:
@
followed immediately by a ‘;‘
At the moment only a very small minority of harvesters can read this, but I wonder how long that will be the case!!
