Protect email address links – Stop email robots to get your email address.

May 23 2009

Posted by Webmasters-central.com as Internet Marketing

SPAM!!! Most unwanted sideeffect of an online presence like having an email or a web site. You know people use email robots to grab emails on web pages. If you keep a link like webmaster@yourdomain.com, then sure your email will be scrapped by email robots.

People search the web for such emails and sell them as safe lists or bulk email lists. You can prevent or minimize the risk of email going in to the hands of spammers by following some simple steps.

1. Simple and easy way: Keep your link like

<a href=”mailto:webmasterATyourdomain.com”>Email me</a> instead of
<a href=”mailto:webmaster@yourdomain.com”>Email me</a>

By this email robots can’t grab your email as they can’t find ‘@’. But you have to keep a note for your visitor to change ‘AT’ to ‘@’ before they give you email.

2. By keeping a mail form: You might have seen on many web sites they keep a contact form instead of a direct email link. In this form your visitors enters the details and click ‘Submit’ button. The form content is processed by a script and sent to you.

3. Image format: Simply put a .gif/.jpg image of your email address as robots and email grabbing software can’t read text in images.

4. The Mailto Encoder: If you own a site on the web, you’re practically guaranteed to get spam. Here is a small utility that helps you to encode your emails on your web site. How it works? Mailto Encoder introduces codes that spambots will “choke” on, but which a normal mailing program ignores. Therefore people can still send you email but spammers can’t get your address!

5. Install a helpdesk script: Install a simple helpdesk that organizes all your contacts and hides your email addresses. Your visitors submit a ticket and you can reply their questions.