Re: How to encrypt email addresses on html file

Hello,

Cloaking the email address involve both hiding the email string in
mailto URI and the link text:
<a href="mailto:john@example.com">john@example.com</a>

The second occurrence, which is intended to be displayed, is sometime
replaced with an object that visually looks the same (image, flash,
java applet), with their accessibility issues; or inserted via
javascript -- but there are rumors that already exists harvesters with
limited javascript capabilities (I insert the email text via DOM,
hoping that DOM support is too much for a harvester), and again you
have accessibility issues.

But if you consider that you may discard the second part, like
<a href="mailto:john@example.com">contact me</a>
assuming that browsers and mail clients go hand to hand, and you just
need to always click that link to send an email.

Now, the sensitive stuff is in the mailto URI, you may replace with an
HTTP URI to a script that redirects (HTTP redirect) to the mailto URI
: http://jamesthornton.com/software/redirect-mailto.html

Eventually at the location, let's say /cgi-bin/redirect2mailto, where
you should send an redirect, you may decide by user-agent, if a
redirect is ok or you should display a contact form.

The redirect covers non-javascript browsers, the only issue remains
how to display the full email address without javascript, images or
other objects; supposing that harvesters look for valid email
addresses one solution would be to glue the email from 2 parts by CSS,
but I'm not sure that selecting and copying it  will work .


Cheers,
-- 
Laurian Gridinoc
Chief Developer
GRAPEFRUIT
www.grapefruit.ro

Received on Saturday, 15 January 2005 11:21:18 UTC