Masking e-mails

  • Unknown's avatar
    icondoit · Member ·

    I put the gravatar widget in one of my sidebars with a link for my e-mail to be used by visitors who want additional information about commercial use of my artwork. I’d like to be able to mask that address from robots and spammers though. I know how to do that with javascript (which I know is not permitted here) so is there someway to achieve this using CSS? I’ve got the Akismet widget in the same sidebar but it apparently only protects the blog itself from spam or so I’m assuming since hovering over the gravatar shows the e-mail address in the status bar.)

    Much Thanks. (see my blog at: http://icondoit.wordpress.com)

    The blog I need help with is: (visible only to logged in users)

  • Unknown's avatar
    raincoaster · Member ·

    Try the solutions here:

    http://onecoolsite.wordpress.com/2007/10/18/eluding-email-address-spam-bots/

  • Unknown's avatar
    devblog · Member ·

    icondoit,

    You could also try my email encoder and email image generator:

    http://www.email-encoder.net/

    My app helps you to generate an image of your email address and encode it (or mask it) so that it doesn’t get harvested by spam bots.

    HTH

  • Unknown's avatar
    icondoit · Member ·

    Thanks raincoaster and devblog for the links. I gave a try to email-encoder.net by copying the encoded e-mail address and then inserted it into both the gravatar widget “custom e-mail address” and the optional “custom link”. While the link itself still works fine, it’s still showing my un-encoded e-mail link in the status bar. I emptied my browser’s cache but that didn’t fix it. Is the problem with the gravatar widget itself?
    Leslie

  • Unknown's avatar
    devblog · Member ·

    it’s still showing my un-encoded e-mail link in the status bar

    That is normal. The “mailto:[email protected]” will always appear in the status bar. That means the browser is reading the encoded email properly. What spam bots look for are text email addresses on web pages – that’s why the use of an image is recommended – and in source code (mailto:[email protected]).

    Having the “mailto:” encoded and your email address in an image, is how you keep those spam bots from harvesting your email address.

    Don’t be concerned if you still see your email address in the status bar, that doesn’t mean is not encoded. It is.

    Now, if you want to keep your email address even safer, don’t link the image… just display it; whoever wants to communicate with you will just have to type the email they see in the image.

    Hope this helps.

  • Unknown's avatar
    t3ck · Member ·

    @Icondoit

    I went to check out your blog and was presented with a log in screen that locked up my Firefox 3.5 browser here is a screen shot. –> http://img27.imageshack.us/img27/2633/icondoiterror.png

  • Unknown's avatar
    t3ck · Member ·

    The link under Icon of the day is what is causing the log in screen here is another screen shot –> http://img10.imageshack.us/img10/4367/icondoit2.png

  • Unknown's avatar
    icondoit · Member ·

    Thanks for all the feedback. The lock-up problem should be solved now. I hadn’t realized that Apple assigns a separate url for files designated as “shared” vs. the “actual” url that they are stored at. Please let me know if you’re still having trouble.
    Leslie

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