Do you hide email addresses to “spam bots” on websites?

Question

Although there are still bots harvesting emails, I'm wondering if you hide email addresses on websites. I know this was common practice a few years back, but it seems that it's starting to fade.

Reasons not to:

• most email servers include quality spam protection, including services such as Gmail and hardly any gets through
• it's annoying to code as you have to remember and searching to change the email later can be tricky
• no method will prevent any harvesting

Reasons to:

• avoid getting on lists you don't want to be a part of
• avoid some bots that are getting addresses for sending emails that can't be detected by spam (specific sales/marketing emails) or that technically aren't spam
• the client or your servers don't have great spam detection

Do or don't you and what are your reasons?

Answer 1

I do occassionally, depends on the email address and what the client might be using. As you say, a GMAIL address is usually pretty robust at spam filtering. Often I'll obfuscate the address though, like using a utility like Jason's above or a technique as shown below...

http://techblog.tilllate.com/2008/07/20/ten-methods-to-obfuscate-e-mail-addresses-compared/

Answer 2

You can hide your email address and display it using JS. This isn't also foolproof but offers some protection.

Something like this should do the trick:

<a class="mail">contact me</a>

// in JS
var parts = ['my', '.', 'email', '@', 'example', '.', 'com'];
var elems = document.getElementsByClassName('mail');
var len = elems.length;
for (var i = 0; i < len; i++) {
    elems[i].href = 'mailto:' + parts.join('');
}

Answer 3

In terms of an honest answer, I generally don't bother, because GMail's spam protection is so great. But I also don't really conduct business via e-mails.

Answer 4

See http://hidemail.at converting your email address into a cool spam-prooved by a captcha service link you can share on the web, in Twitter, forums, Craigslist, anywhere

Here is an example of Email to be published as protected from bots link to try out:

• http://hidemail.at/hu9drzpcfg for Email address faked@example.com

Answer 5

Making your email an image is good, but what about when you make your emails on the fly? Then you need to be making images all the time.

I use eBB tool as an chrome addon. You might read more here: http://www.netbuilders.org/seo4experts-seo-tools/email-bot-blocker-avoid-getting-spammed-bots-27149.html

~Mike

Answer 6

IMO the most important points against hiding are:

• it reduces usability,
• and it annoys me (speaking as a user)

I publish my (non gmail) email address since more than 10 years as plain <a href="mailto:markus@malkusch.de"> into the web. There is no problem with UBE.

Answer 7

Yes, SPAM bots still harvest emails. I saw some stat that said 90% of all email today is SPAM. Obfuscate your email: http://alicorna.com/obfuscator.html It isn't foolproof, but it makes it way harder for your email address to be harvested.

Also, you can make images like facebook does.