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Review of Mailto: Email Encoders

Prevent your email address being harvested from your web site by spammers

Unprotected email mailto: links on a web site are an open invitation to spammers, who have specialised software that will crawl through a site "harvesting" email addresses for sale to others.

Complete protection is not possible, but there are simple techniques that can reduce the scope of the threat at source, hopefully to manageable portions. This is much more powerful than relying on filters at the point of receipt.

Recommendations are given below for:

1. Mailto: Email Tutorials
2. Mail Forms
3. Mailto: Encoder Tools
4. Email Spam Traps

See also the Email Forms Gallery and Dr Wilson - Online Forms for an update.

Mailto: Encoder Tutorials

How to Protect Your E-Mail Address from Spambots

http://www.wilsonweb.com/wmt8/spambot_hiding.htm
Article by Dr Wilson

Defending Against Email Harvesters and Web Leechers

http://linux.oldcrank.com/tips/antibot/
Extensive tutorial, 2003

Spambot Beware!

http://www.turnstep.com/Spambot/
Tutorial, see separate Tool

Get Rid Of Spam - A tutorial

http://ez2ba.com/html/help/guides/get-rid-of-spam.html
How to get rid of spam

Mail Forms

Forms are a more secure replacement for Mailt:, and site visitors are more likely to submit a form than click on a Mailto: link.

See Email Forms Gallery for sample forms.

PHP Form Mail Script

This seems to come in various forms:

• PHP Form Mail Script - STADTAUS.com
• Formmail - Gentle Source

nms FormMail

http://nms-cgi.sourceforge.net/
I used this form program for years. It is a more secure replacement for the original FormMail by Matts Script Archive (see below). But it seemed to be attracting repeat spam attacks, and I wondered if it had been compromised. So now I use Form Mail Script (see above).

Matts Script Archive FormMail

http://www.mattsscripts.co.uk/mattfm.htm,
PERL Form to Email script
Now disparaged in favour of nms (see above)

Mailto: Encoder Tools

Nomailto, a simple mail direct CGI program

http://www.turnstep.com/Spambot/cgi.html#nomailto
CGI Script - Recommended, but not so good for users who use web based email, as opposed to Outlook Express or similar.

Email Address Encoder

http://www.wbwip.com/wbw/emailencoder.html
Best simple HTML, Hex hashing - Recommended
But many address harvestor tools can now decode the Hex encoding.

Avoiding the Spambots

http://www.metaprog.com/samples/encoder.htm
Short tutorial and Javascript

PmWiki | Cookbook / EProtect

http://www.pmwiki.org/wiki/Cookbook/EProtect
PmWiki email protect

Email Spam Traps

These might help you feel better, by fighting back, but are not recommended on balance.

Stopping Spambots: A Spambot Trap - by Neil Gunton

http://www.neilgunton.com/spambot_trap/

W P O I S O N

http://www.monkeys.com/wpoison/