Spambots - Hiding Email Addresses with Unicode

Home | About Us | Contact Us | Privacy Policy | Links
 
Rate SEOptimism
Rating:
10 is the best.
 

Spambots - Hiding Email Addresses with Unicode

 
Author: Richard Lowe, Jr.
Contact Author: mailto:articles@internet-tips.net
Publishing Guidelines: May be freely published w/bylines
Web Address: http://www.internet-tips.net
Autoresponder Address: mailto:article-240@internet-tips.net?subject=send


In many instances you will want to put your email address on your website, even if you provide a form as a contact method. This is useful because it increases the number of ways that someone can contact you. Why is that important? Because presumably if you have a website you are attempting to communicate with the world - and communication goes both ways. If you have a commercial site then the answer should be obvious - someone may want to purchase something.


Another reason to put an email address directly on your web page is for people to request information via autoresponder. These allow your visitors to click a simple mailto link and get your promotional materials or articles in their email inbox.


The problem with directly including your email addresses on your page is spam harvesters. These a programs created by scum and run by ignorant or unethical fools. What they do is search through the internet, looking at web sites and pages for email addresses to add to those million email address collections that you see advertised (mostly in spam) all over the place.


There is really no ironclad way to prevent these bottom-feeders from scanning your web site for email addresses. There are a number of techniques, however, to make it a little more difficult for them.

One of these is to code your email addresses in something called Unicode. This is a "language" for encoding special characters on web pages. All modern browsers support Unicode as it's primary intention is to allow languages all over the planet to be represented.

For example, the following email address:

webmaster@internet-tips.net

will be shown in Unicode as:


webmaster
@internet
-tips.net

As you can see from the table below, using Unicode characters is simple. Just substitute the Unicode sequence in the table for the corresponding character. Then use all of those sequences wherever you want to put that email address.

@ @ E E M M U U c  c k k s s
. . F F N N V V d d l l t t
- - G G O O W W e e m m u u
_ _ H H P P X X f f n n v v
A A I I Q Q Y Y g g o o w w
B B J J R R Z Z h h p p x x
C C K K S S a a i i q q y y
D D L L T T b b j j r r z z
I suppose it is inevitable that the scum spammers will eventually make their spam robots smart enough to understand these codes. Until then, however, it is a reasonably effective technique for reducing spam in your inbox.

To see a list of article available for reprint, you can send an email to:
mailto:article-list@internet-tips.net?subject=send_article_list
or visit http://internet-tips.net/requestarticles.htm

----------------------------------------------------------------------
Richard Lowe Jr. is the webmaster of Internet Tips And Secrets at http://www.internet-tips.net - Visit our website any time to readover 1,000 complete FREE articles about how to improve your internet profits, enjoyment and knowledge.

Return to Index of Spam Articles



SEOptimism Ezine

Subscribe to SEOptimism to Learn How You Can Rank Highly in the Search Engines

WEBSITE101 TUTORIALS

HTML Tutorial | CGI tutorial | Email Tutorial |
Spam Tutorial | Cookies Tutorial | Privacy Tutorial | Windows Tutorial | DreamWeaver Tutorial | Domain Name Tutorial | Business Plan Tutorial | Search Position Tutorial | Online Advertising Tutorial | Ecommerce Essentials Tutorial


Search this site
powered by FreeFind




             
**FED UP With Email Harvesting SpamBots?**

Here's a free CGI Script that removes your email address from your web site, yet still allows visitors to your site to email you!
Free Download here
Google
  Web www.WebSite101.com
 
Directory
A+ Award

Home | About Us | Contact Us | Privacy Policy | Links
 

Email WebSite101   5318 E. 2nd St. #789 Long Beach, CA 90803
P 562/572-9702   F 707/924-0940