Using Character Sets to Hide Email Addresses From Harvesters from Geoff Deering on 2001-12-03 (w3c-wai-ig@w3.org from October to December 2001)

From: Geoff Deering <gdeering@acslink.net.au>
Date: Mon, 3 Dec 2001 17:18:03 +1100
To: "WAIGL" <w3c-wai-ig@w3.org>
Message-ID: <NBBBJPNFCLNLAADCLFJBIENDDCAA.gdeering@acslink.net.au>

How accessible is hiding email addresses in character sets for speech
readers and other devices.  I would like to at least attempt to hide email
addresses from email harvesting bots.  For instance, the following is this
list's mailing address in standard form;

w3c-wai-ig@w3.org

and character set form;

&#119;&#51;&#99;&#45;&#119;&#97;&#105;&#45;&#105;&#103;&#64;&#119;&#51;&#46;
&#111;&#114;&#103;

They should show up the same in most browsers, but most bots will probably
not be smart enough to recognize it as an email address.  Of course, it
won't work in a mailto:.  So does leaving the anchor tag out with the
mailto, and just putting it in as text make it too much of an accessibility
penalty also?

Geoff Deering

Received on Monday, 3 December 2001 01:17:34 UTC