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If you're limited to HTML there are some simple things that could help disguise your e-mail address,
but if you want the link to work for humans it must be parsable by the browser, and any spambot
worth its salt should be able to do the same.
Real protection requires server side code: CGI, ASP, etc., but this is not an
option for many of us. Better protection is afforded with the Javascript
solutions but some people prefer not to use Javascript.
Probably the best simple method is to use an image. This does require that your correspondents
open up their mail clients manually rather than click a link, and then copy your address from the
image. At least this is safe from current harvesters, though they are getting more cunning in their
methods. To avoid the possibility of OCR in the future it might be a good idea to use a mixture of
fonts. Remember though if a human can use your address from an image then another human can harvest
it manually and add it to a spam list. A further point about image solutions is that one should
also consider the limited ability implications. See further the
Bobby portal. Perhaps an <alt> tag of "mail to jay
gee at spell ess tee you are en eye dee ay ee end spell dot com" might do, as this would come out
correctly in a web talker, however I'm no expert in this.
I used to have other techniques listed here but the simpler methods are not worth using now that
spam bots are getting more sophisticated, some can even pick up on Javascript methods. If you want
to see an analysis of the various simple methods have a look at section 3 on the
Berkeley advice to students page.
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